A few months ago I ventured into the new Cleverlys album with mixed results. Yet, my reservations are not ones expected from a bluegrass fan when they hear the Cleverly’s style of music. I actually felt they had the abilities and responsibility to dive further into the material they were tackling. When the timbres and dynamics are so drastically different than your desired instrumentation, it is up to the musicians to make up that gap.
A Cleverlys predecessor which does not need to face these same puzzle pieces are the Seldom Scene. Wisely and predictably given their ages, their new cover album Changes consists of folk songs written by such greats at Gordon Lightfoot, John Prine, and Townes Van Zandt. While this detour into the folk realm has always been in play for this group of musicians, one of the usual clan has not taken the musical journey this time round. Banjo player and stage comedian Ben Eldridge unfortunately decided to pack it up and has since been replaced. By whom you ask? I wish I could give you a good answer, but it’s merely Ron Stewart. From the first roll on “Everybody’s Talkin’”, most famous for its appearance in the film Midnight Cowboy, it’s clear that a banjo replacement will not be a hinderance to this album’s quality. Both Stewart’s weightless fills on the intro track and his filthy, groove-engrossed fiddle playing on “Louise” make for a match in heaven when accompanied by Lou Reid’s voice.
While it’s always great to hear from this superb set of musicians, the album never seems to kick itself out of first gear. After the introductory track previously mentioned, the bpm of no track every gets past “chunky”, which I would assume to be a common issue when deciding to cover folk songs from the 60s and 70s. Aggravating those material decisions is the fact that several of these songs have been performed in eerily similar ways with similar ambitions by groups in the last ten years. “Darcy Farrow” was covered on the new Jeff Scroggins & Colorado album with similar lyrics and arrangement; and if that wasn’t enough, the concluding track “Sweet Baby James” has been covered in countless genres including by Terry Eldridge and The Grascals.
Shameless covers of previous hits seems like a good moment to pivot to another new bluegrass release that needs to be discussed. On Friday August 30th PBS premiered a two hour bluegrass documentary which is definitely not supposed to be a substitute for the presumed lack of recognition in the Ken Burns Country Music Documentary premiering on September 15th. To further this blatant, but understandable compromise, the whole documentary seemed like a constant compromise of all the things bluegrass has been and what it can be. If I were to say what the overarching problem of the whole project was, it was that they told Rosenberg’s story instead of the Robert Cantwell story which I find to be much more useable and nuanced. If one hasn’t read Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound by Robert Cantwell, I would highly recommend it.
Leaning on Rosenberg does not result in any lies or inaccuracies, but what it does is place the whole story under a specific lens that is disingenuous to what the music is. Under the Rosenberg story, while mentioning its commercial enterprises and backdrops, it is perfectly content to romanticize the music’s origins with an immaculate synthesis story. This story, again, isn’t inaccurate, but leaves a lot of the real nuts and bolts out because they place bluegrass in a non-folk light. These nuts and bolts? What about Ragtime and Tin Pan Alley? What about Minstrel music and stage comedy? These aspects of Rosenberg’s story are either largely ignored due to their perceived roots in pop and not in “ancient” folk music, or they are grouped into the whole idea of “putting on a show”.
So why tell this story? Because it emphasizes family and togetherness over competition and dominance. It highlights the festival jams and open-air meetings and not the record disputes and the knife fights. Bluegrass of course has familial aspects, they couldn’t have made an entire documentary without some semblances of truth, but by focusing on specific aspects of the story they turned it into a two hour advertisement for the music and not an accurate representation of the music and way of life we all appreciate warts and all. I realize asking for a bluegrass documentary to explain the music’s reservations doesn’t seem like the most promising way to promote the music, but people who learn to love and live for the music accept it for its pros and cons.
