My wife and I watch too much television. I slowly work my way through several books I want to read, but each one takes weeks to finish because I get engrossed in the darn TV.
We are both news junkies and watch the BBC and CBS news shows early in the evening. Then we get into The Colbert Report and the Daily Show, and just when I should click the thing off and pick up my book, I peek at the channel guide and scroll through the stations and (usually) find something that looks so interesting we end up watching urban raccoons or penguins in Antarctica or something political.
But lately our scrolls through the channels are turning up more bluegrass and Appalachian music.
It came to a head the other night when we watched J.D. Crowe and the New South and the Del McCoury Band, taped at the IBMA Fan Fest two years ago when it was still in Nashville. I said, “OK, this is amazing. I have to write about this.”
I don’t pay a lot of attention to which PBS station we are watching. Our Comcast system gets us KQED, KCSM, KRCB and KVIE, and it took me a little time on the internet to track down just what/where I am talking about. It turns out that the recent digital revolution has made it possible for one channel, KQED for instance, to send out four separate signals: KQED, KQED Plus, KQED Life and KQED Kids. And I may have missed one.
But the mountain music isn’t coming from KQED, it’s coming from something called KCSMDT. In the San Francisco Bay Area where I live it is channel 717 on Comcast cable. I assume the “DT” means “digital transmission” or something, but whatever it means there are some cool shows on it. Two in particular.
J.D. and Del, and some other great acts we’ve seen in past weeks, are on a show called Jubilee, put out by Kentucky Educational Television (KET). This is a great service, and we’ve seen a few one-off documentaries from them in recent months, all of which concern the music of rural areas. Jubilee is telecast on Thursday nights at 8, and shown again at 1 a.m.
Tonight’s Jubilee features Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and the Rambling Rooks, a new group with former Lonesome River Band members Ronnie Bowman, Don Rigsby and Kenny Smith. Next Thursday the show will have the Boxcars (with Adam Steffey on mandolin and Ron Stewart on banjo), the Skip Cherryholmes Quartet (with Gena Britt, banjo; Beth Lowrence, bass; Ashby Frank, mandolin; and, Matt Ledbetter, Dobro) and The Chapmans, from Springfield MO.
The other traditional music program I have been enjoying lately is Song of the Mountains, out of the little town of Marion VA. There’s a nicely refurbished theater there, called the Lincoln, and they feature more regional acts from around the area. It’s also on KCSMDT, on Fridays at 8 p.m.
Tomorrow night the show will feature the Kruger Brothers and Kontras Quintet (OK, probably not traditional, but they have a banjo) and a group from Virginia’s Blue Ridge, Paula Dellenback & Fox River. Next Friday they’ll show an unusual group, The Easter Brothers, three veterans who have been performing bluegrass and country gospel music for over 60 years.
These are geezers, to be sure, (I can tell as I am one, too) but they must still be able to bring it, as they were in the running for a Gospel Music Association Dove Award for their latest album. In the event, the prize was taken by Nathan Stanley, Ralph’s grandson, but as they say in Hollywood, “It’s an honor just to be nominated.” Also on that night will be The Gentlemen of Bluegrass, a North Carolina group that plays in the vein of the Seldom Scene and the Country Gentlemen.
These are two great shows to watch for, but also some public TV station or stations (again, I wasn’t paying attention) have shown Steve Martin’s documentary “Give Me the Banjo” recently, plus a nice documentary on the music of Appalachia, and I remember a few weeks ago watching Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn in concert.
So far I have limited my public media donations to KPFA in Berkeley, KQED and KALW in San Francisco, but I may have to add KCSM, just to keep my bluegrass fix.?
