One of the things I love best about bluegrass music is how fluid it is. People are writing great new tunes every year. It’s a genre that has been around for longer than I have been living and that makes it pretty old by definition. But the music is always being interpreted in new ways by skilled pickers who have been well schooled in the musical tradition.
Consider for example the song High on a Mountain. Ola Belle Reed, who comes the old time tradition, wrote the song. She played it with very Spartan banjo licks backed by guitar and focused on the singing. That was a good idea, it’s a great song with great lyrics:
High on a mountain, wind blowing free
Thinking about the days that used to be
High on a mountain. standing all alone
Wondering where the days of my life have flown
Fortunately for bluegrass fans, Del McCoury’s band picked up on Ola Belle’s song and recorded their own version. It’s a bluegrass classic now. Del’s band is true to the melody but Ronnie adds some very classic Monroesque licks to the song and it becomes another bluegrass standard just like that.
One of the great things about great musicians is that they put their own stamp on everything they play. For example, listen to how Hot Rize does the same song. Pete Wernick produces a really cool effect by playing his banjo through a phase shifter and Tim O’Brien sings and picks out of the box.
We have a lot of great young pickers in our bluegrass community. CBA’s great Kids on Bluegrass program has nurtured some of these wonders but others have latched onto the music simply because it’s a fun thing to do with your friends. I’ve seen these kids hanging out with each other and playing all sorts of stuff. They appear to be having an even better time than me and my fellow aging so called bluegrass jammers. We boomers would never play some of the trendy stuff these kids are playing but when they cover an old standard in a novel way it sure does our hearts good.
Let’s play lots of music at Turlock! Let’s make it sound old and traditional. And let’s add some spice once and a while with some new wrinkles to some old music that will never grow old if we keep feeding it.
