Post by fogcitygal on May 11, 2005 1:07:31 GMT -5
Are You A Bluegrass Fan? 
This question is posed by Sam McManis of the Tacoma Washington News Tribune. Not sure? Read on...
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Getting to know bluegrass brings musical rewards
This is how it begins:
You plunk down $7.50 at the multiplex to watch the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and you notice your foot starts tapping involuntarily. It’s either a neurological disorder or you’re getting into the soundtrack, something alien to your suburban sensibilities, something called “bluegrass.”
You are not the kind of guy/gal to listen to country music, all that high hat, big hair, grating pedal-steel noise. Yet, this isn’t country and, unaccountably, you find yourself at the music store purchasing the soundtrack. You feel like the poseur you are, “discovering” a new type of music in 2000 that has been around for ages. But you notice you’re not the only one. Others of your ilk are buying them up, too, and you cynically think, “If I just wait six months, I can get a barely played copy in the discount bin of the used record store.”
Six months turn into two years and, one night, you find yourself standing in a line stretched around the block outside a Berkeley, Calif., club waiting to see Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. He’s old enough to be your grandpa, but you’re on your feet clapping as hard and reacting as reverently as if it were Bono onstage.
This bluegrass thing is just a musical fling, you tell yourself. You won’t give up your rock ’n’ roll roots, your singer-songwriter leanings. But you’re still playing that soundtrack, and you learn that the singer in the so-called “Soggy Bottom Boys” really is Dan Tyminski, who plays with Alison Krauss & Union Station. So you get really into Krauss, even buy her early CD when she’s young and a little chubby. Though you still aren’t sure exactly what a dobro is, you admire the sounds Jerry Douglas makes with the thing.
You still don’t consider yourself a “bluegrass fan,” though. You still have questions: Why such an aversion to drums? Why is the guitar downplayed so much?
Plus, it’s supposedly “white trash” music, after all, and how can you relate? You like to consider yourself an urban sophisticate, even though the suburbs still run in your veins. But you tell yourself to be open to new aural experiences and, about this time, the movie “Songcatcher” is released, and you get the soundtrack just because of Gillian Welch.
You fall hard for Welch. She’s what some call “newgrass,” artists who take the traditional bluegrass music and tweak it just a bit to attract a younger audience (and, in bluegrass, younger means around 40). She wears those plaid thrift-shop dresses and black boots, and when she does her rendition of the traditional “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor,” you completely submit and lose your ironic distance.
Through Krauss and Welch, you discover other “newgrass” artists. Chris Thile and Nickel Creek, for instance. He’s in his early 20s and is to bluegrass what Bright Eyes is to alternative rock. You recommend his song “On Ice” to friends, but they just give you blank stares.
These same friends ask you what you are listening to. You tell them Lou Reid , the Osbornes and J. White. You don’t tell them it’s not Lou Reed, but Lou Reid and Carolina singing “My Remains,” and it’s the Osborne Brothers, not Ozzy, doing “Midnight Flyer,” and it’s Jeff White, not Jack of the White Stripes.
By the time you buy an iPod shuffle and put Ricky Skaggs’ “Monroe Dancin’” on it (a great tune to jog to, by the way) next to R.E.M. and Elvis Costello, you suppose you now truly are a bluegrass fan.
You’ve finally figured out what the attraction is. It’s the weird juxtaposition of hard-driving music and often truly depressing lyrics about death, poverty, moonshine and lonesome hearts. Nothing is as mournful as bluegrass god Bill Monroe doing “Wayfaring Stranger.” Nothing is as beautifully wrought as Stanley and Welch’s duet “Gold Watch and Chain.” Nothing is as pulse-pounding as when Alison Brown gets to working on her banjo.
You still listen to rock. You still have your CD rack of singer-songwriters. But you’ve made a place for bluegrass in your life, and you’re better off for it.
--------------------------------------------------
So, are you a bluegrass fan?
This question is posed by Sam McManis of the Tacoma Washington News Tribune. Not sure? Read on...--------------------------------------------------------------
Getting to know bluegrass brings musical rewards
This is how it begins:
You plunk down $7.50 at the multiplex to watch the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and you notice your foot starts tapping involuntarily. It’s either a neurological disorder or you’re getting into the soundtrack, something alien to your suburban sensibilities, something called “bluegrass.”
You are not the kind of guy/gal to listen to country music, all that high hat, big hair, grating pedal-steel noise. Yet, this isn’t country and, unaccountably, you find yourself at the music store purchasing the soundtrack. You feel like the poseur you are, “discovering” a new type of music in 2000 that has been around for ages. But you notice you’re not the only one. Others of your ilk are buying them up, too, and you cynically think, “If I just wait six months, I can get a barely played copy in the discount bin of the used record store.”
Six months turn into two years and, one night, you find yourself standing in a line stretched around the block outside a Berkeley, Calif., club waiting to see Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys. He’s old enough to be your grandpa, but you’re on your feet clapping as hard and reacting as reverently as if it were Bono onstage.
This bluegrass thing is just a musical fling, you tell yourself. You won’t give up your rock ’n’ roll roots, your singer-songwriter leanings. But you’re still playing that soundtrack, and you learn that the singer in the so-called “Soggy Bottom Boys” really is Dan Tyminski, who plays with Alison Krauss & Union Station. So you get really into Krauss, even buy her early CD when she’s young and a little chubby. Though you still aren’t sure exactly what a dobro is, you admire the sounds Jerry Douglas makes with the thing.
You still don’t consider yourself a “bluegrass fan,” though. You still have questions: Why such an aversion to drums? Why is the guitar downplayed so much?
Plus, it’s supposedly “white trash” music, after all, and how can you relate? You like to consider yourself an urban sophisticate, even though the suburbs still run in your veins. But you tell yourself to be open to new aural experiences and, about this time, the movie “Songcatcher” is released, and you get the soundtrack just because of Gillian Welch.
You fall hard for Welch. She’s what some call “newgrass,” artists who take the traditional bluegrass music and tweak it just a bit to attract a younger audience (and, in bluegrass, younger means around 40). She wears those plaid thrift-shop dresses and black boots, and when she does her rendition of the traditional “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor,” you completely submit and lose your ironic distance.
Through Krauss and Welch, you discover other “newgrass” artists. Chris Thile and Nickel Creek, for instance. He’s in his early 20s and is to bluegrass what Bright Eyes is to alternative rock. You recommend his song “On Ice” to friends, but they just give you blank stares.
These same friends ask you what you are listening to. You tell them Lou Reid , the Osbornes and J. White. You don’t tell them it’s not Lou Reed, but Lou Reid and Carolina singing “My Remains,” and it’s the Osborne Brothers, not Ozzy, doing “Midnight Flyer,” and it’s Jeff White, not Jack of the White Stripes.
By the time you buy an iPod shuffle and put Ricky Skaggs’ “Monroe Dancin’” on it (a great tune to jog to, by the way) next to R.E.M. and Elvis Costello, you suppose you now truly are a bluegrass fan.
You’ve finally figured out what the attraction is. It’s the weird juxtaposition of hard-driving music and often truly depressing lyrics about death, poverty, moonshine and lonesome hearts. Nothing is as mournful as bluegrass god Bill Monroe doing “Wayfaring Stranger.” Nothing is as beautifully wrought as Stanley and Welch’s duet “Gold Watch and Chain.” Nothing is as pulse-pounding as when Alison Brown gets to working on her banjo.
You still listen to rock. You still have your CD rack of singer-songwriters. But you’ve made a place for bluegrass in your life, and you’re better off for it.
--------------------------------------------------
So, are you a bluegrass fan?
