Every year, during the first week of October, a brave, hard working, intrepid band of CBA members makes the trek to the International Bluegrass Music Association meeting in Raleigh, NC; a fast-paced, sleep depriving, intense week of business, picking, listening, and running the CBA suite. No fair readers, this is not a trek for weak of spirit, the faint hearted, persons suffering from enochlophobia, individuals with super-acute hearing, or Bluegrass haters. These brave souls thrive on only 3 hours of sleep a night, running the CBA showcase of 8 bands per night from 8PM till midnite, serving food and refreshments until 3 AM, cleaning the suite till 4AM, all for 5 nights in a row, and getting up every morning for a 9 or 10AM CBA team meeting. This grueling pace takes its toll; repetitive motion injuries associated with opening bottle top caps, rolling meat and cheese rolls, and “acquiring” 300-400 pounds of ice every afternoon from all the ice machines on 13 floors of the Raleigh Marriott, are suffered by each and every team member, not to mention the inevitable “head cold” that seems to visit team members at the end of the week or soon after returning home. I believe Lucy Smith is writing up an actual suite report, so I won’t steal her thunder in this column, but I will give a shout to all my fellow CBA suite comrades, team members and volunteers….ya’ll kicked butt and to all you CBA readers, give Lucy Smith a big hug when you see her and thank her for doing an excellent job organizing and running the suite, and booking the showcase bands….oh and beg her to do it again next year…..no begging isn’t good enough, maybe grovel a bit…….or a lot. Lucy essentially organizes a festival within a festival and her job for the 2016 IBMA starts about now.
It is an action packed week to say the least, but I have a few favorite moments. While most of the CBA team’s time is spent working the suite, or performing other CBA duties, one way or the other we all try to get out and experience the IBMA business meetings and the associated Wide Open Bluegrass festival. When you are trapped in a hotel with thousands of bluegrass fans, and performers, there are plenty of opportunities to have a bluegrass adventure par excellent! One of the things I need to mention is that we were really trapped! There was a hurricane blowing in weather, which means the festival had to be moved indoors at the last minute.
Most of us arrive Monday before the IBMA meeting to put the suite together, and the day usually ends in a small organic jam in the suite with folks just casually dropping in. I say “folks” and “casually” with a touch of sarcasm because last year the casual drop-ins were Michael Cleveland’s band. This year we were quietly picking along and a guy who is a regular at the suite drops in, Gil Benson, a great fiddler from Ohio who I look forward to hearing every year, and a new face, a quiet, unassuming guitar picker, with a pretty thick southern accent. Yeah I know, what’s the first thing I notice, not the make of guitar, but the accent. Oh and by the way she introduced herself as Louisa Branscomb, at which point Lucy gave me a swift dig in the ribs and proceeded to try and not fall out of her chair. Louisa won, with Claire Lynch, the 2014 IBMA Songwriter of the Year award, and also wrote a well-covered song, “Steel Rails”. Well you know me, I’m pretty thick, so I just said something like “that’s nice” and continued picking. But some of my other moments were on my own. The suite next to us was the unofficial “Grey Fox Festival” suite and they had a house band of musicians all named “Joe”. One of those “Joe’s” was Joe Craven, who I’ve wanted to meet for years, and I did, but one of the other “Joe’s” was Joe Newberry, who played our 2015 FDF and taught at music camp, and is one of my favorite songwriters. So I got to talk to Joe Newberry for a bit, which was really special moment. Lucy Smith and I went to the pre-awards show mixer, where of who of all people, Helen Foley, one of our own, was playing. If you are a people watcher this was a whole heap of fun, because many of the musicians that were part of the IBMA awards show were getting a pre-show drink. Somehow, we got in a conversation with Claire Lynch and her husband when he says “don’t try to sit down” and I look around to see Frank Solivan….the Jr….with a smirk on his face and sitting in my chair. Since he stole my chair, Frank offered his lap for me to sit on….so I did. Lesson of the day…..I do stupid dares, so be prepared.
One of the things you need to understand about the CBA suite at the IBMA is we are a kind of a destination. A major destination. Our showcase is to die for and word gets around. Now this is a good news bad news thing because we have a full suite every evening for the showcase bands and then we have a very full suite for the midnite-3AM jam. So full that we have to manage the number of people in the room…which is another way of saying we get crowds and crowds and crowds of people in the room, in the hallway, and on the entire floor. Crowds! One of the problems with all these people is noise, especially hallway noise bleeding into the room during the showcase bands. Well, one evening my good friend Rick Cornish decides to help quell some of the noise and he goes to the end of the crowd and in his loudest, biggest voice yells “QUIET PLEASE MOVE DOWN THE HALLWAY IF YOU NEED TO TALK!!!!”. (I hope the irony is not lost here.) If you know Rick, he has a pretty big voice and the result was not what he hoped for because of course many of the folks in the hallway started yelling back their opinions of his request. Eventually the hallway returned back to its normal din, and we just lived with it.
Now, since our suite is pretty well known at the IBMA, it turns out that by Friday night the entire city of Raleigh has heard about our showcase and jams, and the entire city shows up…..when I say entire city what I really mean is the entire metro area consisting of Raleigh, Durham, Research Triangle Park, and at least 3 major universities. Helping to run the suite on Friday and Saturday nights is hard work. Now if you can get in the suite on Friday or Saturday evening what you will see is a jam, of sorts, but you can’t hear anything for all the talking and shouting…..folks are certainly having fun. So here I was standing outside our suite about 1AM on Sunday morning, when Paul Shiminger, the IBMA Executive Director, and his wife show up and I offer to get them a drink. Paul says thanks and decides to check the room out, gets about 2 feet in the door before running into the crowd and turns around. I think Paul was a little surprised because the look on his face was one of amazement from the sight of the bedlam. This is what I sometimes call the “deer in the headlights look”. I will remember that look for a long time.
Now if these moments weren’t enough, the next few moments really were very special. There are a few welcome columnists that don’t live in California……heck they don’t live on the west coast, much less the continental US. Every year I send out an invitation for a Welcome Columnist Jam at the FDFand I try to include these far flung correspondents in that invitation in the hope that one day I will actually get to meet them. My dreams were answered. The first person I saw at the IBMA when I walked into the hotel was Ted Lehmann. Ted is an occasional, sometimes frequent welcome columnist, who is well known for documenting bluegrass festivals, music, bands, and everything bluegrass. A few days later I see Loes van Schaijk, our Welcome columnist from the Netherlands. But to top it off, I’m in the Raleigh Airport making my way to the gate and in front of me is a lady with a fiddle case over her shoulder. So I ask her about her IBMA experience and it turns out she was flying to Grand Cayman Island……sorry but I suspect there aren’t a lot of pickers from the Caymens, but there is a Welcome columnist!. You got it….at the last minute on my way home I met Ellie Withnall to score a trifecta of Welcome columnists I was least likely to meet in person. What a wonderful way to end the IBMA week with a sweet surprise like that. Thanks guys and let’s do it again next year.
