I’ve seen very good players cringe when someone in a jam calls the Ralph Stanley classic Clinch Mountain Backstep. Okay, maybe not very good players but just the same some good jammers do flinch at the call.
Because I revel in redundancy, or because maybe there are two or three of you reading this that don’t know what I’m talking about, let me try to explain.
As Ralph plays it, it’s a banjo tune in an AABB format if you don’t know what that means email me and read something else on the CBA site until we connect. Nah just kidding, remember I revel in redundancy.
AABB is a typical instrumental form in old time music where a tune has two parts an “A” part and a “B” part. AABB means that you play the “A” part twice and then the “B” part twice for a full version of the tune.
Anyway the hook in this particular tune is that there is a change in the time signature for a short portion of this tune in the “B” part. While this is a somewhat common occurrence in old time music, Clinch Mountain Backstep is called in bluegrass jams because of the banjo style Ralph uses. Pay attention here, as this is the critical part of the explanation. The bluegrass players I play with don’t do that time signature changing thing very well or often. Mostly, that’s a product of whom I play with as I’m sure the pros, semi-pros and most semi-amateurs can accomplish this time signature change.
But back to where I was, in a lot of jams, the backstep can be a cause of consternation. I colloquially call the time signature change “the backstep”. I don’t know if that is technically or literally correct but it works for this piece. I’ve gotten in trouble using this terminology in the past for instance at a jam in the late nights. I told a fiddle player he missed the backstep in his break. He’s held it against me since. But I digress (again).
Rhythm players in particular have issues with the backstep although melody players have some problems as well. In case you’re not clear (although I’ve told you just about every month for 10 years), I’m a bass player and have been known to attempt to play rhythm in jams on occasion. Also, I’ve played Clinch Mountain Backstep a few thousand times. Enough times to put a dent in my 10,000 hours you might say, so when it comes to putting in the backstep in the tune I pretty much got it. However, it can get tricky sometimes. Let me explain.
In a jam, at his or her turn someone will call Clinch Mountain Backstep. Usually it is a fiddle or banjo player and they have probably played the tune enough times to know it. The caller will kick it and the first time through it is spectacular with the backstep placed very neatly into the “B” part. Then it passes to the next person maybe a guitar player who has played the song a few times but not nearly as many times as the caller (or the bass player) and with the help of the of the competent rhythm guitar player, the group still hold together with the backstep but the tune loses just a little of it’s groove and so on around the circle until it hits a newbie dobro player followed by a newbie banjo player and before long no one knows where the heck the backstep went.
I find it amusing, after this experience to listen to the discussions that ensue after the tune, where the blind try to talk the blind through the change in the timing. Explanations of how to count and when to start counting are all versions of our own personal internal devices, that we developed to use to keep time when playing. So when multiple other players try to count the dobro player through the backstep, the variations7 and examples can get over the top pretty quickly but are usually good for a chuckle……….and of course futile.
I came up with this topic after running into this in jam this week. The events as portrayed are true. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. I will be going to this jam next week and will be looking to the mischievous fiddle player calling this great Stanley tune (one of my favorites) again. I suspect he gets the same chuckle as I do.
