I tend to have writing ideas flowing through my head all the time, but as soon as I accepted the offer to write this column, all those lovely ideas disappeared into thin air. Funny how that works. But I’ve made a commitment, so I guess I’ll just start at the beginning and see what happens.
I’m a newbie to the Bluegrass scene, but I am very interested in learning about the music and the people. I enjoy Bluegrass music, at least the little bit I have heard and I love live music of all kinds – well, all kinds that have a guitar at least – and I am looking forward to exploring Bluegrass through jams. I am lucky to have access to some excellent musicians who are more than happy to have me tag along, and over the next year my goal is to try to get to the Bay Area for a jam at least once a month so I can meet more people and learn more about the music.
I have to admit, when Rick Cornish first approached me about writing a Welcome Column I was hesitant. While I have decent writing skills, I am not versed in the culture or the history of the Bluegrass community and I am afraid I will say the wrong thing or not have anything to write that CBA members would find interesting. But this opportunity arrived at the same time that I decided to challenge myself to be more social and outgoing. So really, I had no choice but to accept – it was the exact thing I had asked for. My mom always told me that as soon as I set my mind on something the universe will deliver it, I just have to pay attention because the packaging isn’t always what I’d expect it to be. Well, at 37 my eyes are finally open and I’m noticing, Mom!
If you read my How I Discovered Bluegrass story then you know a little about me, so I’ll just quickly say here that the limited exposure I’ve had to Bluegrass, prior to my son starting in the Youth Academy in 2014, is due to the Grateful Dead and the heavy influence Bluegrass music had on their sound. Thanks to David Grisman’s Grateful Dawg collaborations I knew who he was and had heard at least his version of Bluegrass music in the early 1990’s after the album Garcia/Grisman was released. I discovered a love for mandolins, though I didn’t know anything about them at the time and it would be decades before I was reintroduced to their beautiful sound.
With this limited exposure, I feel a bit at a loss when surrounded by a group of lifelong fans discussing the difference between traditional bluegrass and “newgrass” or differences in picking styles amongst banjo players. I only know if it sounds good to me. I like the old stuff and the new stuff and things in between. I just like music, plain and simple. So I will keep trying and learning and listening, and hopefully someday I will understand all of the nuances. Until then, I’ll keep my ears open and let those more in the know than me do the talking.
One of the things I have been enjoying as I explore bluegrass music on youtube is the fact that there are so many versions of the same song, for example, Shady Grove. I can see it performed by Doc Watson, Tim O’Brien and David Grisman, all in one place, connecting generations of music for little old me right there on my phone and at the touch of my fingertips. There’s a lot of reasons I dislike technology, but the access it provides to music beats all the negatives, in my opinion. As a music fan, this is a great time to be alive!
And bluegrass is everywhere! In fact, it snuck up and surprised me over the weekend when I attended a show by my favorite band, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, a rock and roll band with roots in blues, country and old school rock. A band called Cornmeal opened for them. I hadn’t had a chance to check out any of their music before the show, but when the band took the stage and I saw a banjo, fiddle, acoustic guitar and stand up bass I was very excited.
They put on a really high energy set, and I know they aren’t traditional bluegrass, but it was very fun, foot-stompin’ music that made it impossible for me to keep still. After the show I had a nice conversation with the fiddle player, Phil Roach. I explained a little about myself and my interest in bluegrass and my lack of knowledge about it. I asked him how he would classify their music and he said that they generally fall under the category of “jamgrass” and sometimes “progressive” bluegrass. I told Phil that I definitely heard some Garcia-like riffs coming from the stage and I was surprised to find that it was coming from his fiddle and not the guitar player, then we talked a little about how the Grateful Dead are a huge influence of theirs.
I made a point of purchasing their most recent album from the merch table – Slow Street – and have been binge-listening to it since the show. Some of their songs remind me of the Grateful Dead, in that they combine bluegrass and rock in a very similar manner. It’s very happy music that I have really enjoyed listening to at high volume with my windows down! I think my favorite song off the album so far is Coming Back Home. They played it in their set and it really got the crowd going – there was lots of dancing on the floor. It was a real treat to have discovered this band in an unexpected place and I look forward to seeing them again.
So with that, I will bring my very first Welcome Column to a close. I am so very excited to have discovered and been embraced by the CBA community and I am looking forward to the musical adventures my eyes have been opened up to. Rick is kindly providing me with a “crash course” in bluegrass history, but I welcome comments and suggestions from those in the know! If you have a video, book, article, jam – anything – that you think would help further my education, please feel free to email me at bluegrassnewbie@gmail.com. I am hoping to go to the Strawberry Music Festival Labor Day Weekend and catch a jam in the Bay area for my next column, so if you see me out there, come on over and say hi to the hippy girl with the pink hair!
