The annual WinterGrass Festival, held in Bellevue, WA (just east of Seattle) is my late-winter acoustic music oasis and seasonal bridge. It’s the first leg of a three-state musical extravaganza that caps off my winter and gives me a firm shove into spring. This year’s “bridge” trip was another fully packed journey of reunions, recod learning.
Washington
At WinterGrass, I reconnect with my musical family. I usually travel up to Washington a day early to hang with friends in Seattle before I dive head-first into the festival. The music at the festival is highly eclectic, ranging from leading-edge contemporary string band music to long-time bluegrass artists. Del McCoury and David Grisman performed this year, as did violinist Jeremy Kittel and band, the Canote Brothers (formerly of the south Bay Area), and Front Country (an emerging acoustic jam band with virtuoso picking and soulful performances, and formerly based in the north-east Bay Area.) Other notable groups included David Grisman’s “Dawg Trio,” featuring Grisman, Danny Barnes & Samson Grisman; The Jacob Jolliff Band; Kenny and Amanda Smith; Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands; the Swedish super group Vässen; and of course Darol Anger, Mike Marshall, Joe Craven, Renata Bratt, and the entire education contingent that brings intense local participation and loyalty to the festival. This is a fundamental part of WinterGrass’s success, as altruistic corporate entities and individuals typically underwrite a portion of WinterGrass’s costs. An entire youth string orchestra rehearses for several days under the tutelage of mentors Vässen, Anger, Marshall, Craven, Bratt, et al, and then puts on a spectacular Sunday concert, sharing the stage with the big names.
No late Saturday night for me…
At WinterGrass, I try to get all my luggage and equipment properly packed on Saturday afternoon, to be ready for the next day’s morning flight to Nashville. Flights from the west coast to the east usually leave quite early in the day, to make up for flying against the time zones. And I don’t want to have to make important packing decisions (or noise) in the wee hours of Sunday morning. So after the final band finishes, I usually head up to bed. Usually.
Nashville
My plane landed just as the sun was going down in Nashville. Spring was coming early, and the outside air was cool and soft as I waited for my ride into town. Ben Surratt, married to bassist Missy Raines, came and picked me up. What a guy! Ben runs his “Rec Room” studio in a quiet part of Nashville where many professional musicians also live. Ben records Nashville’s top acoustic groups, including Missy’s bands, so he has a great collection of high-end gear along with good acoustic spaces. As a result, I’ve enjoyed working in Ben’s studio for many years. We had a good catch-up over dinner at Pomodoro’s, our favorite local Italian restaurant, and then Ben went back to the studio for some late night mixing while I settled into my hotel for the night.
Monday morning
On the way to the studio, I swung by Mitchell’s Deli for a bag full of their famous sandwiches and pickles. This is insurance for a good day of studio work! And the bags of chips also do their part…
Back at the studio, Ben had already placed mics, stands, cables, and headphones, so my session set-up was quick and easy. Within a few minutes, David Grier showed up, early as usual, and carrying his two beautiful dreadnaught guitars. For many of my all-instrumental productions, I like to place a rhythm guitar on each side of the stereo mix. Tracking these two rhythm parts on two separate guitars makes for a richer, more engaging sound, so David accommodates my wishes and shows up with two guitars.
Accordionist Jeff Taylor plays with the Time Jumpers, a Nashville-based group of top-level musicians. He arrived next, with several armloads of accordions and a portable keyboard. Jeff is an excellent sight-reader, understands music theory well, and has an impeccable sense of time. Within a few minutes, he was seated in the front iso-booth, going over the melodies that we were about to record. I really like having his live melody playing as the rhythm section records. His phrasing is wonderful, he uses great instruments, and it’s fun and easy to work with him.
Todd Phillips then staggered through the door, carrying his big bass and grimacing at Grier’s jokes about his denim overalls. “Move to middle Tennessee and join the fashion parade,” quipped Grier through his Father Time beard. These two go way back, and love playing together. That’s a guarantee for a grooving rhythm section. In fact, as great and creative as David Grier’s solos are, it’s his rhythm playing that makes me use him on all of my sessions.
If it’s Tuesday, this must be Rob Ickes
I stayed up late Monday night, editing and mixing so that I could work easily and quickly with Dobro master Rob Ickes on Tuesday. Rob also showed up early, carrying his beautiful spruce-top Scheerhorn resonator guitar, along with his current favorite microphone, an old Neumann KM-84 which Mike Auldridge used for most of his career. We recorded Rob through that old mic, plugging it into a George Massenberg mic pre and then directly into Pro Tools. Good gear is important, but great sound really starts with a master musician and a good acoustical space. We had both. We broke for some Mitchell’s sandwiches and chatted about common friends (Rob is originally from the Bay Area) and about raising kids. We had a fun day, and I was happy to then spend that entire evening in my hotel room, finishing one of Mitchell’s best while editing and making work mixes on my laptop computer.
Kansas City, here I come
The third leg of my musical odyssey was the annual conference of the Society for American Music (SAM,) held this year in Kansas City, MO. I joined SAM fifteen years ago to learn more about music research and musicology. It’s been a really helpful relationship, and I’ve connected on a personal basis with a number of members. Professor (and guitarist) Greg Reish now runs the Center for Popular Music, a research and archive center at MTSU in Murfreesboro, TN. Professor Chelsea Burns is a new hire at Eastman School of Music, and brings her accordion to conferences, where we enjoy making music as well as talking about it. Fiddler Laura Risk just got her PhD at McGill University in Montreal, and we played Quebecois tunes as well as a few of mine at the Friday night jam session at the conference.
As I waited for my airport shuttle in the conference hotel on Sunday, I set up my laptop and headphones on a secluded table and once more went through the tunes I had recorded a few days before in Nashville. Good stuff!
What a wonderful way to welcome the spring! If music were food, I’d have gained fifteen or twenty pounds in the week and a half I spent at WinterGrass, Nashville and Kansas City.
Still, it’s nice to be heading home. In fact, Marty and I leave for Italy in just a couple of weeks. Our bicycles and fiddles are going with us.
Copyright © 2018 by Joe Weed
Joe Weed records acoustic music at his Highland Studios near Los Gatos, California. He has released seven albums of his own, produced many projects for independent artists and labels, and does scores for film, TV and museums. Joe’s composition “Hymn to the Big Sky” was heard in “The Dust Bowl,” a film by Ken Burns, which premiered nationally on PBS. Joe recently produced and released “Two Steps West of the Mississippi,” a collection of his original instrumental music based on American fiddle roots. Reach Joe by email at joe@joeweed.com, or by visiting joeweed.com.