A Simple Song Gets Complex With A Second Look

I love this song, but I was hard-pressed to say what's extraordinary about it until I listened -- really listened -- to the lyrics.

"I fell in love in Cincinnati," Steve Gulley sings, following with the standard tale of a naive young man falling prey to a citified gold-digger, and a chorus that you wouldn't write home about. The final verse goes like this:

I wish that I was in Kentucky
With mama, and papa dear
But mama's gone now, and so is papa
And Kentucky's a long way from here

And, all of a sudden, the chorus makes horrible sense:

It's a lonesome feeling when you're traveling
Down a lonesome road, down a lonesome road
Nobody cares a thing about you
It's a heavy load, it's a heavy load.

The lonesome road is the Hillbilly Highway, both literal and metaphorical, that Appalachian migrants took to escape the poverty at home for the jobs to be found in the wealthy, industrial north.

More than one bluegrass pioneer made this journey -- Bill Monroe, Red Allen, and The Osborne Brothers, among others. Like this song's protagonist, The Osborne Brothers journeyed from Kentucky to Ohio. Eventually, they found musical success. Without the family, culture, and institutions that had sustained them back home, they found their share of loneliness and isolation, too.

This is Steve Gulley, Dale Ann Bradley, and Debbie Gulley with "Lonesome Feeling".

What Is Bluegrass, Anyway?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Re-upping this piece from November 3, 2017.

It's a question that has perplexed even veteran bluegrass artists, with the possible exception of Bill Monroe, who fathered the genre; a question revisited so often that, in bluegrass circles, it has its own acronym -- WIBA.

What is bluegrass, anyway?

You'll never hear the same answer twice.

Even I, in the relatively-short lifespan of this blog, have suggested different answers.

It might seem strange, but I was pushed to solidify my position on this issue after viewing a superb documentary called "How Britain Got the Blues", which I wrote about here.

The parallels between the way the Mississippi Delta blues gained popularity with British middle class kids in the 50s and the way American college kids embraced traditional bluegrass music just a few years later are striking: White kids, middle class, well-educated, on the liberal end of the socio-political spectrum, with a healthy respect for the original artists, a profound understanding that they had nothing in common with the life experiences of those artists, and the steadfast refusal to act as though they did.

Fast forward to 1996, and award-winning "bluegrass" wunderkind, Alison Krauss, interviewed by Jim Macnie for Rolling Stone in January of 1996.

"You and your band have changed some perceptions about what bluegrass can be and what country is," Macnie observes. 

Krauss: "I think whatever we have slipped by somebody is great. [Laughs.]"

It's hard not to think of Led Zeppelin, who have been sued more than once for ripping off traditional blues artists, and have demonstrated only the most flippant regard for the consequences of their actions. It's interesting to note that Krauss and Zeppelin's Robert Plant were romantically linked for years.

Could it be that what bluegrass is, has do to with morals and ethics?

For me, the answer is definitive: It's how you -- as a fan, promoter, journalist, DJ, publicist, record company exec, or artist -- treat the art and culture of people who have almost nothing but their art and culture to mark their place in the world.

It's whether you seek to redefine or replace that art and culture to entertain privileged, white audiences while reinforcing the idea that they and you are preserving an artistic and cultural expression that is both cutting-edge and authentic.

But, it's the 21st century! If you don't do bluegrass the way everyone else is doing it, how can you do it at all?

Theologian, Eugene Peterson, suggested a better way when he wrote, "The poor are not a problem to be solved, but a people to join."

Regardless of what their belief systems may have been, both Mike Seeger and his half-brother, Pete, exemplified this mindset in the way they collected, distributed, performed, and promoted American vernacular music, and the way they respected its original artists.

Sadly, though there are those who hold similar views today, they lack the prevailing influence on the culture that the the entire Seeger family had. Today's amateur musicologists look to American Idol and Madison Avenue for their promotional strategies, scorning preservation as drudgery, and an impossible task, besides.

If, as many bluegrass traditionalists claim, bluegrass music is dying, it's because the vast majority of "bluegrassers" don't believe they have a moral imperative not to kill it.

Bluegrass Music: The Death Of A Thousand Cuts

EDITOR'S NOTE: Re-upping this piece from September 5, 2017.

Anyone who's familiar with the work of Jerry Douglas knows he is neither an alarmist nor a strict traditionalist. Yet, last month, he tweeted something (above) indicating that even he might be  getting a little worried about the future of bluegrass music.

Threatened form of bluegrass? Indeed.

Last month, co-founder of Rounder Records, Ken Irwin, took to BGRASS-L to present clear and convincing evidence that bluegrass is on its way out as a distinct Grammy category -- simply because of an insufficient number of submissions by potential candidates for the bluegrass Grammy.

Naturally, there were excuses in abundance. Somehow, there always are, in bluegrass (Yes, the "bluegrass is circling the drain" discussion has been had more than once).

The truth is, there's always been tension between art and commerce, and there always will be. Yet if, as so many suggest, there's no money to be made from traditional bluegrass (except for Jimmy Martin, Ralph Stanley, except, except, except -- also an old familiar refrain in bluegrass music), how is it that so many newgrass, spacegrass, jamgrass, and so-called "traditional-plus" bands can't scrape together the submission fee to take a shot at Grammy glory?

How is it that there are scads of Alison Krauss CDs in the record store used bins, but no Jimmy Martin, no Bill Monroe, no Ralph Stanley? Could it be that the tepid brand of brunchgrass favored by Krauss and artists like Lonesome River Band, Laurie Lewis, Special Consensus, The Gibson Brothers, The Boxcars, and so many more fails to live up to the hype?

When hardcore bluegrass fans rhapsodize that "You've never heard anything like this," what must newbies think when they switch on the radio and find that bluegrass, too, sounds all alike?

The blame for that numbing sameness can be laid at the door of the radio programmers, bloggers, journalists, PR flacks, and label owners who claim to be on the lookout for the heirs to the first generation but, when presented with passionate, traditional acts, say "We don't want to starve."

So it goes, and it's going right out the window. Don't take this as a warning, though; the time for warnings is long past. Take it as inevitable, and hope that, 100 years from now, somebody cracks open a time capsule, finds a recording of  "Uncle Pen" or "Man Of Constant Sorrow" or "Hit Parade Of Love", and decides to play bluegrass for the love of it, whether or not it is financially feasible. It's only unrealistic when someone decides that their "something to fall back on" needs to be bluegrass music, bent and shaped into something resembling a cash cow. Or a golden calf -- whatever.

So, you see, there's a reason you haven't seen a lot of bluegrass on a blog that started out as nothing but. It makes me sad but, as I've remarked in previous posts, I'd rather die than go backwards. If this is what the future sounds like, so be it.  Sure, it sounds bitter and I am -- a little bit. I'm also looking forward to whatever comes next.

See, when artists aren't held hostage by a label like "bluegrass" -- or the gruesome parody that the genre has become -- they're free to make passionate, sparkling, hopeful music. I'm tired of scarcity, negativity, gate-keeping, and excuse-making. I want to be where there's more than enough, as long as you widen your sights.

For me, bluegrass died a long time ago. I've done my best to try and bring it back to life. I refuse to turn my back on it, but I'm not going to sluice through the rubbish looking for gold, either.

Funny thing about gold though, it tends to show up, bright as day, whether you're working or playing.

I'd rather play.

The Crooked Gospel Way

 Gospel music has always been a part of bluegrass music and culture; Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, designed it that way. “It’s got Methodist, Baptist, and Holiness singing,” Monroe said of bluegrass, naming three Christian denominations with three then-distinct singing styles.

Anyone who has an inside knowledge of bluegrass can point to artists, past and present, whose sanctimonious public personas hardly match up to their hell-raising, sometimes addicted, sometimes downright mean private selves.

Some people would like to use that knowledge an excuse to jettison gospel music from bluegrass altogether. After all, if these artists are in such bondage to their socially-conservative culture, shouldn’t we free them — and non-Christian bluegrass fans in the process — from it?

Sure, if you think they’re so ignorant, culturally-unaware, and disempowered that they need you to come in and improve their culture for them.

For those who are still in school learning about these things, that’s called cultural imperialism. It’s just as ugly when upper-middle class white Americans force it on working-class, Appalachian southerners as when the American government forces it on, say, Native Americans.

That said, bluegrass gospel music will be a regular feature here on Uncouth Utterance. Doubtless that will irritate the stuffing out of some of you.

I’m fine with that. Cultural imperialism? Not so much.

This is a very early recording of The Louvin Brothers from a live, local radio show with “The Gospel Way”.

This Is Why We Can't Have Bluegrass Things

I'm supposed to write an arresting opening line here -- one that grabs your attention, and sets the tone for the piece.

But, I am just. so. tired. 

You know, the kind of tired you get when you read self-important drool from what amounts to a major media outlet in your particular small pond. 

I'm speaking of this piece on rock's allegedly uneasy alliance with bluegrass and country music, over on the, um, "Bluegrass" Situation. The inspiration for the piece? "West Coast rockers", The Flying Burrito Brothers, and their groundbreaking album, The Gilded Palace Of Sin.

Uneasy alliance?

Who cares that bluegrass is as much about history as it is future?

Who cares about the rebellious, countercultural energy of bluegrass' first generation when you believe that bluegrass begins with a rapacious suburbanite from Champaign, Illinois? (Long hair, warp speed, hotshot instrumentalists, the high lonesome sound, the sketchy personal lives -- bluegrass wasn't exactly yer grandpa's sleepy string band)

And who cares if that selfsame major media outlet takes the name of bluegrass in vain, just to sell itself "as the authentic expression of a brand-name musical genre with considerable cachet" as I wrote here?

Some megachurch baby has a point to make, and he's gonna make it.

Let's sort this out, shall we?

Just how unlikely would it have been for a bunch of California hippies to ally themselves with country and bluegrass music?

Never mind the huge number of boomers and 1960s kids whose parents played bluegrass and country, live or via radio and records, in their homes. Never mind that this population included not only native southerners, but those who had taken the Hillbilly Highway in search of work. Never mind the bluegrass  versions of songs about that very phenomenon -- "California Cottonfields", "One More Dollar", and "Waitin' For the Hard Times To Go".


Let's instead focus on that most obscure and academic of cultural indicators -- television. 😂😂😂

How antagonistic were them librul hippies to country and bluegrass?

So much so that country and bluegrass artists The Carter Family, Flatt and Scruggs, Doc Watson, The Dillards, and Johnny Cash appeared on the beatnik showcase, Hootenanny. Premiere date? April, 1963.

So much so that country and bluegrass artists as diverse as Watson, Cash, The Stanley Brothers, Cousin Emmy, and The New Lost City Ramblers appeared and jammed with noted union supporter, Pete Seeger, on Seeger's Rainbow Quest TV show. Premiere date? 1965.

So much so that rockers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Linda Ronstadt -- the last three based in California -- appeared and jammed with country star, Johnny Cash, on his eponymous TV show. Premiere date? June 7, 1969.

For the sake of chronology, let's review the release date for The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace Of Sin:

How easy was that?

I guess you have to know history to Google it.

You should be required to know history before you're  hired to write about it.

Bluegrass vs. Blahgrass

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece was originally published on January 25, 2014.

Before I turned my back on the naysayers and self-conscious, middle-class climbers around me to embrace bluegrass music, I was a classical flautist and singer. I played for 22 years, sang for 16 before I burned out on music altogether.

I fell in love again when the bluegrass bug bit, almost 10 years ago now. I wrote reviews and commentary on bluegrass music and culture until just a few years ago, when some serious diagnoses prompted me to turn my attention to caring for my family.

Even now, because of my musical background, musicians come to me for advice. Recent queries have come from pickers with a problem that, I think, may be unique to bluegrass music: Veteran musicians, raised in Appalachia on traditional bluegrass music, hired by bands outside Appalachia, are being told that they just aren’t meshing with the other pickers.

“We’re authentic,” these bands tell their errant members. "Our instruments are made of wood and stuff. We knew Bill Monroe. We play bluegrass. And our audience knows bluegrass music."

Sitting in the echo chamber day in and day out, these Appalachian pickers begin to believe what they’re told. Maybe they’re just following the money. Maybe they can’t tell the difference between sincere admiration and cynical exploitation of their culture by rootless city dwellers who have no culture to call their own. But bluegrass?

I listen to a clip like the one below, and I beg to differ with those citified gatekeepers:

You don’t play for a knowledgeable audience steeped in bluegrass culture. You play for an audience that shares your commitment to eradicating those folkways that embarrass you. You play for an audience who, like you, believes it is entitled to disrupt and dismantle any culture whose socioeconomic profile offends you; to, in fact, shame it out of existence and re-appropriate it as your own – as long as you share, ostensibly, the skin color of that culture’s originators.

You don’t play bluegrass. You play whitewashed, self-congratulatory, fin de siecle slop, palming it off on an equally self-congratulatory – and proportionately-ignorant – audience by selling it as the authentic expression of a brand-name musical genre with considerable cachet.

Case in point: This mercilessly-suburbanized version of Bill Monroe’s great "Sitting Alone In the Moonlight” sounds as if somebody slipped Morticia Addams a couple of Xanax and a pitcher of diet Cosmos.

To those bluegrass pickers suffering from alleged cognitive dissonance, I say this: If the people you’re picking with sound like this bunch when you dream of sounding like this or, well, you know, this, there’s your trouble.

St. Patrick's Day For Didacts

Silly me! I thought St. Patrick’s Day was all about honoring the tremendous contributions of the Irish people to American culture by celebrating with them. You know … fun. Until Slate Magazine’s didactic little tantrum over Irish and, by extension, Irish-American myth-making, that is.

St. Patrick didn’t drive any snakes out of Ireland? Shocking! Surely they’ve renamed the Blarney Stone the “Earnest Freshman Debate Stone” by now.

If you believe that, I have some CDs to sell you from a guy who says that sloppy playing, sweaty hair, and churning rhythm add up to bluegrass innovation. He’s the one making a living exploiting the bluegrass connection to Scots-Irish culture while “educating” his followers with rehashed book learning that’s supposed to pass for cultural authenticity.

So, go ahead, have fun. Indulge in a bit o’ the blarney. And don’t let the hall monitors get you down.

Oh, and if you want to hear a bit of what the Ulster Scots brought to bluegrass, here's the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe, with a tune his Uncle Pen Vandiver taught him -- "The Dead March".

So, this is bluegrass: Families concerned about how their kids are growing up, and wanting some wholesome activity to take the kids' minds off the toys and media made by companies that have a vested interest in kids growing older younger.

Consequently, you'll see a lot of family bands in bluegrass music. A lot of them are pretty bad, but a few rise to the top of the heap. Cheyenne and Maddie Dalton, collectively billed as That Dalton Gang, sound as though they might be poised to join the good ones in a few years' time.
 
Here they are with a tune from Bob Wills, and it's even age-appropriate. This one's called "Roly Poly".

This film dates from the mid-70s, but these kinds of band contests take place all over the United States, even today. Not only does Bluegrass Skyline feature talented amateur pickers in both bluegrass and old-time styles; it includes fine solo performances by contest judges Lamar Grier (of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys) and Tracy Schwartz (New Lost City Ramblers).

All in all, a very enjoyable film, and one that I'll be recommending to friends who love this music as much as I do. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can even watch it free.

Interpreting Trad Without the Sap

In contrast to rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass music prefers to stay in touch with its roots, even if they aren’t cool, hipster, and detached – probably because they aren’t.

For interpreters of traditional songs, this part of bluegrass culture presents a problem: How do you put these traditional songs across – particularly if they’re gospel songs – without seeming so earnest and on-the-nose that you lose credibility altogether?

You study the pioneers like crazy, and consider how you can apply their secrets to your own sound – that’s how. You study performances like this one by The Stanley Brothers. It’s unusual in that Ralph takes the lead.

It’s remarkable in that his vocal on this number is surely one of the greatest bluegrass vocals you’ve never heard. Every note is suffused with emotional truth in this performance of “Precious Memories”.

If you’re a bluegrass fan, you’ve heard stories like this one many times before, but the story that Patty Loveless tells makes the song that follows absolutely bone-chilling.

Written by Darrell Scott, this is “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”.

Damn, this is a sad story! What’s even sadder is that it was told countless times by every Southern migrant who left the poverty of Appalachia for a lonely, punch-the-clock existence in the industrial Midwest.

Some, like Bill Monroe and The Osborne Brothers, found musical success – or the stepping stones to it – up there. Others, like the man in this song, found only broken dreams.

Here’s Lester Flatt, with the inimitable Josh Graves on dobro, telling the timeless tale of hard luck in “Detroit City”.

Rashville: The Fallout From Using Your Words /As/ Your Fists

 EDITOR'S NOTE: I wrote this post in November of 2014. In the course of moving posts from Tumblr to Blogger, I decided that this one is no less urgent today than it was back then. The place of bluegrass as a discrete musical genre has always been precarious, so it's crucial for those of us who love bluegrass music to keep an eye on those who would dilute and destroy it.

Like most of us, Chairman of the IBMA Board, Jon Weisberger, arose from small beginnings. For years, he could be found as “useyourwords” (a screen name that quotes the mother’s favorite, “Use your words, not your fists.”) on bluegrass message boards and e-mail lists, pummeling with his rhetorical fists all who doubted his de-ethnicized, suburbanized vision for bluegrass music. Anyone who opposed Weisberger was subjected to relentless invective and eternal enmity – dished out as withering sarcasm every time the dissenter dared comment on another subject.

Sadly, most people are go-along, get-along types, so Weisberger managed to claw his way to the top of the bluegrass food chain. “IBMA Board Turmoil Continues with Second Resignation” – offers an inside look at what Weisberger has wrought in his time as IBMA board chairman.

The article mentions that IBMA Executive Director, Nancy Cardwell “tendered her resignation” last month. That she did, after two decades of organizational pothole fixing and bridge building. It was Cardwell’s plan to move the IBMA annual convention to Raleigh, NC, where it has received an enthusiastic welcome, rave reviews, increased attendance, and increased profit.

Cardwell “tendered her resignation” immediately after this year’s successful, well-attended, and well-reviewed IBMA gathering in Raleigh, in the wake of another event that followed on the heels of the convention – a closed-door meeting, during which the IBMA Board of Directors gave Cardwell, the architect of their Raleigh success, a vote of no confidence.

As I've said before, if you want to change things, join the IBMA, and vote!

Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys spent at least part of New Year’s Eve 1954 recording this tune for the “Bluegrass Instrumentals” album. The wheel horse, incidentally, is the horse harnessed nearest the front wheels of a wagon. Wheel horse has also come to mean a hard-working, dependable human – like Bill Monroe and the guys who follow his lead here.

This is “Wheel Hoss”.

In contrast to rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass music prefers to stay in touch with its roots, even if they aren’t cool, hipster, and detached – probably because they aren’t.

For interpreters of traditional songs, this part of bluegrass culture presents a problem: How do you put these traditional songs across – particularly if they’re gospel songs – without seeming so earnest and on-the-nose that you lose credibility altogether?

You study the pioneers like crazy, and consider how you can apply their secrets to your own sound – that’s how. You study performances like this one by The Stanley Brothers.

This one is unusual in that Ralph takes the lead. It’s remarkable in that his vocal on this number is surely one of the greatest bluegrass vocals you’ve never heard. Every note is suffused with emotional truth in this performance of “Precious Memories”.