There's
the rapid fingerpicking of a five-string banjo
and a flurry of notes from a mandolin.
The musicians' voices blend into one high
lonesome sound, singing, "Oh, me/Oh, Lordy,
my/You could hear the whistle blow a hundred
miles." The tune is "Reuben's
Train," a traditional song that frequently
fills the air at bluegrass festivals.
Only this is not a bluegrass festival, it's a
rock concert. The musicians aren't wearing cowboy
hats and string ties, but shaggy hair and
T-shirts, shorts, and bare feet. The audience is
not a group of senior citizens at a Grand Ole
Opry revue, but dancing 20-somethings adorned in
tie-dyed shirts and sandals, who may not know
Bill Monroe from Marilyn Monroe. The mandolin
player puts down his instrument to let loose a
fiery electric guitar lead, and the singer
improvises a line on how Reuben broke his neck in
a wreck that might have made Mother Maybelle
blush.
The band is Leftover Salmon, the self-described
"polyethnic Cajun slamgrass" band who
began spreading the latest craze in rock - souped
up bluegrass tunes - 11 years ago in their
hometown of Boulder, Colorado. Since the sextet
broke out of Boulder to national acclaim a chain
of acts has followed in their tracks, playing
electrified bluegrass mixed with calypso, jazz
and even reggae to post-Generation X audiences at
sold-out concerts. This hybrid musical form is
often called newgrass.
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HOW
BLUEGRASS BECAME NEWGRASS:
>
October 1940 - Bill
Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys
record "Mule Skinner
Blues" for RCA Victor in
Atlanta - beginning of commercial
bluegrass
> January,
1948 - Lester Flatt and Earl
Scruggs leave Monroe's Blue Grass
Boys
> 1969 - Earl
Scruggs Revue adds drums and
electric guitar to bluegrass
band, covers Bob Dylan songs
> 1970 - The
band Bluegrass Alliance releases
album titled
"Newgrass." Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band releases
"Will the Circle Be
Unbroken"
> 1972 -
Former Bluegrass Alliance members
form New Grass Revival
> 1975 -
"Old & In the Way"
released
> New Year's
Day, 1990 - Leftover Salmon forms
in Boulder, Colorado
--Art
Howard
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"I
definitely think the popularity (of
newgrass) has increased recently,"
says Vince Herman, lead vocals for
Salmon. "Eleven years ago we would
go in (a rock club) with a banjo and in
one particular instance the club owner
said, 'You can't do that in here! That's
not college music!' And now it is. Some
doors have definitely opened." Newgrass has its
roots in the early 1970's. The "blue
grass music" that was created by
Opry star Bill Monroe found a new
audience with hippies who identified with
the earthy, organic sound. In an attempt
to catch the attention of this new
audience Earl Scruggs, the banjo virtuoso
who had come to prominence as one of
Monroe's Blue Grass Boys, formed the Earl
Scruggs Revue and mixed banjo with rock
instrumentation and Bob Dylan lyrics.
Soon the
hippies started experimenting with rock
and bluegrass themselves. In 1972 the
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released a
two-record set of traditional folk and
country tunes called "Will the
Circle Be Unbroken." Later, in 1975,
Grateful Dead founder Jerry Garcia
recorded a side project of old bluegrass
numbers; the band (and album) were
christened Old & In the Way. The Dirt
Band and Garcia's recordings were
critical in bringing bluegrass to a
young, urban rock audience and paving the
way for newgrass. By the late `70's New
Grass Revival, a quartet of longhaired
instrumental stars based in Nashville,
was stretching the music into the realms
of progressive rock and jazz.
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A
man who has watched `grass go from "blue to
new" firsthand is 73 year old fiddler Vassar
Clements. Clements became one of Monroe's Blue
Grass Boys while still a teenager and played on
both "Circle" and "Old & In
the Way." He says seeing the genre's
recurrent popularity is like déjà vu,
"It's really eerie. It seems like I'm seeing
the same faces, same dress, almost the same
people that I saw in the `70's. I first noticed
it two or three years ago down at Magnolia Fest.
I would get cold chill bumps on me. I said,
'What's happening? Has this been handed down from
the parents to their kids, or are they hearing it
for themselves for the first time?' I don't know,
but I'm thankful for it."
Thomas "T-Dawg" Helland is a concert
promoter who was turned onto bluegrass via
fraternity brothers in college. Helland is now
producing his fourth annual Harvest Fest, a
three-day Atlanta-based music festival with a
bill consisting of folk and rock n' roll bands,
including Leftover Salmon and Clements.
"It's wonderful to see newgrass rising in
popularity," he says. "With so much
wrong with the music industry these days it's
really great to see the music go back to its
roots and attract a whole new legion of
fans." The maverick promoter credits
Americana music festivals such as Colorado's
Telluride and North Carolina's Merle Fest,
bluegrass chanteuse Allison Krauss, and the
twangy soundtrack to the movie "O Brother,
Where Art Thou?" with bringing the music to
the forefront.
"There are people in their 60's, 70's and
80's who come to the shows," Herman says,
"Because it is so rooted in traditional
music, I think it can appeal to a wide range of
folks."
Clements says the difference in bluegrass and
newgrass is not so much in the notes as it is in
the players, "They add a little bit of their
own feelings to the tunes, and that makes it good
because you can't beat your own feeling."
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