David Morris, Author at Bluegrass Today

The Boxcars roll along

Here’s some discouraging news for any bands hoping for a turn in the spotlight during the 2012 IBMA awards show. The Boxcars, early favorites in a number of categories this year, are heading back to the studio next month and hope to have a new CD ready to sell by late fall – in time for awards consideration next year.

Like their debut album, which came out just before last year’s IBMA bash, the follow up project will be on the Mountain Home label. The hardest part, Adam Steffey told me Saturday, was meshing everybody’s schedules to find time to track.

Part of the problem is that the guys all have other commitments. John Bowman and Keith Garrett are teachers, Harold Nixon is a web designer, Ron Stewart is in demand as a session player, producer and engineer and Adam is on the faculty at East Tennessee State University’s bluegrass program.

Another part of the problem is self-made. The band has a heavy touring schedule this summer because of the success of the debut CD and heavy airplay of a handful of its songs.

“We never put a hard and fast number on it, but we’re way beyond where we thought we would be,” Adam said, noting that it’s never clear how something will go over or how fast a band will catch on. “Sometimes the wheels of bluegrass turn a little slower.”

True, but the Boxcars have one huge advantage over the average new band – solid, big-name talent at every spot on the stage, with pedigrees that made them a legitimate supergroup before they ever played a note when they got together in January 2010. Don’t tell them that, though, or you’ll get an aw-shucks response that seems genuine.

I was fortunate to attend the band’s CD release party and IBMA debut last fall in Nashville. I caught up with them again Saturday night, before a sold-out show in Falls Church, Va., celebrating the 10th anniversary of WAMU’s bluegrasscountry.org. The Boxcars were solid last year. They’re even better now. The harmonies, for one thing, are crisper. Adam isn’t surprised. “With any five musicians, the more you play together, the more you gain a comfort factor,” he said. “I hope a year from now it’s even tighter.”

But some things haven’t changed from last September. Adam is still a human metronome on the mandolin, and when he and Harold, the bassist, are locked in, the atomic clock can’t do a better job keeping time. And Keith Garrett, one of the three best male vocalists in bluegrass, is still a chemistry teacher, dreaming of a day when music is his only job. “If it was Boxcars or bluegrass full-time, that would be awesome.”

And, when the Boxcars take the stage, it’s still all about the music. There’s no flash, no theatrics. They just stand there and play. And, man, can they play.

Bluegrasscountry.org passes a milestone

With a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the help of many volunteers who digitized tracks from CDs and vinyl, Dick Cassidy put WAMU Radio’s bluegrasscountry.org on the Internet in 2001. There were no hosts and the schedule was sporadic. “It was,” he recalled the other day, “a computer playing music to a schedule.”

Ten years later, bluegrasscountry.org and its on-air HD radio programs are bluegrass staples. Its hosts have won five IBMA broadcaster of the year statues and top bands go out of their way to perform live from the Washington, D.C., station’s studios. The music is reaching an ever-expanding audience.

In the May Arbitron report, Katy Daley’s weekday morning drive show on WAMU 88.5-2, attracted 10,400 weekly listeners and Ray Davis’ afternoon drive program drew 12,900. While those numbers might seem small, they were enough to make the bluegrass channel the first HD programming to crack the Top 50 shows in the competitive Washington market and just the second to chart in the country. On top of that, there are 60,000 unique visitors per month for bluegrasscountry.org and additional listeners on seven community stations that broadcast WAMU’s offerings. (The unique visitors numbers are from 2009 so they may be somewhat higher by now.)

The HD bluegrass channel went on the air in 2007. Katy, who instantly owns any room she walks into, remembers being razzed by broadcast friends from mainstream radio about her “little Internet station.” But with consolidation and automation cutting radio opportunities in recent years, she’s probably having the last laugh.

“It’s as exciting as my first day on the radio,” Katy told me.

The 10th anniversary of web programming was marked by Saturday night’s WAMU Stars at the State concert at the State Theatre in Falls Church, Va., featuring the Boxcars, the Steep Canyon Rangers and Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen. The theater sold out and the music was terrific, but the hosts and others from WAMU aren’t about to sit back and rest on their laurels.

The station’s general manager, Caryn Mathes, said the decision to invest more than $400,000 in a 24/7 HD radio channel was easy to make. “I’d seen the loyalty and passion of the bluegrass community,” she said. “It’s paying off more and more every year.”

In the short run, the next step is using an experimental license from the Federal Communications Commission to expand the HD signal to reach a bigger audience. Longer term, she said the challenge was “to honor and preserve the tradition but figure out where the music is heading.”

There is also a need to keep pace with continuing changes in technology. WAMU has apps for iPhones and tablet computers such as the iPad and is ready to pursue whatever is next.

The bluegrass world will be watching closely, because it has a stake in what happens. As traditional radio programming leaves less room for bluegrass, and as the genre’s primary audience ages, technology may be a lifeline. “Whatever new platform comes along, we’re going to take a close look,” Caryn said. “You never know where you’ll find your new audience.”

Former Flamekeepers move on

Tom Adams, Jesse Brock and Marshall Wilborn, fresh from their falling out with Michael Cleveland, are forming a new band and hope to hit the studio this summer.

The band doesn’t have a name, has no gigs lined up and still needs to hire fiddle and banjo players. “This is still in the very early stages,” Tom Adams told me.

The cursory announcement ends any chance Mike Cleveland had of reuniting the band after an acrimonious split a month ago. People close to both bands say Mike tried to mend fences a few weeks after the breakup, but that an agreement couldn’t be worked out. Plans for the new band started to come together about two weeks ago.

Mike, too, is trying to put together a new band and is touring in the meantime with David Peterson and other musicians he has performed with in the past.

Tom, Jesse and Marshall are all top-flight pickers and past IBMA award winners. But just as Mike Cleveland’s stage show lacks a certain spark without the trio surrounding him, these guys will have a tough time capturing the magic Mike’s fiddle brought to their efforts. That said, another top talent could make the guys the next bluegrass supergroup.

Stay tuned.

Editor’s note: Michael responded to this post via his publicist here.

Dr. Tom Bibey’s newest challenge

When Tom Bibey’s CD of mandolin duets with Darin Aldridge comes out, pay special attention to the opening track, Amazing Grace. It won’t have the polish of a studio recording, but it will have more than enough raw emotion and energy to compensate. The song was recorded Sunday on Tom’s back porch — just days after he learned he has a brain tumor. Brooke Aldridge joined in, as did Wayne and Kristin Scott Benson.

The CD is just one of numerous projects Dr. Tom has lined up for later this year and beyond. There’s a mandolin instruction book for children and the much-anticipated follow-up to his first novel, The Mandolin Case. And, most importantly, his first grandchild, a boy, is due in October.

Dr. Tom, as he is widely known, has been telling friends and readers of his blog about his condition in a frank, just-the-facts manner for days, but this morning his report was welcomingly upbeat. “OK guys, I have a treatable brain tumor,” he wrote on his blog. “There are documented cures of my disease, and not just sporadic ones.”

He was similarly upbeat in a message he sent me last night to share with readers of Bluegrass Today:

“I have concern but no fear. I have faith, a secure place in Eternity, the best family and the world’s finest extended music family – bluegrass. Combine that with great docs and nurses and I have as good a chance as anyone could have.”

I’ve only known Dr. Tom for a short time, since we both served as correspondents for Bluegrass Today at IBMA last year. But I feel like I’ve known him forever. I still carry the $2 bill he gave me in my wallet, and I think about him every time I sing that song about losing all my money. These last few days I’ve been singing it a lot in tribute to this wonderful character.

There is a long road ahead for Dr. Tom, including chemotherapy. The early stages of his disease and treatment have affected Tom’s close-up vision and have left him too weak to hold a Fender Telecaster to play country music, but his sense of humor and sense of what is right are still intact. The other day he wrote a song called The Brain Tumor Blues, which he dedicated to “my doctors, my nurses and to anyone who suffers.” And while he asks for prayers, he said he doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. Save that, he asked, for those without resources to fight their illnesses and for children with cancer and other serious diseases.

At one point in the song, he sums his philosophy for dealing with the tumor and getting on with his life:

“There’s doctoring to do and stories to tell, still so many songs to play I’ve just got to stay.”

In a message about that recording of Amazing Grace, he wrote, “Let the healing begin.”

Amen, Dr. Tom. Amen.

Michael Cleveland and the Fill-Ins

The schedule said Mike Cleveland and Flamekeeper. The ear, though, heard something else. And the eyes kept searching for familiar faces on the main stage at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. In an ironic twist of fate, the band’s first appearance since the unexplained departures of Marshall Wilborn, Jesse Brock and Tom Adams happened in Tom’s hometown and plenty of folks were puzzled by his absence.

But the show must go on, and a fine show it was. David Peterson, standing in Tom’s customary spot at center stage, is one of the best traditional bluegrass singers around, as he proved again and again in Saturday’s first set. But save for one burn-it-up instrumental, this wasn’t a Flamekeeper show. It was, in a sense, David Peterson and 1946, albeit with a fiddle on steroids.

As he walked off stage, Dave told me his ride with Flamekeeper will be short. “I’m just helping Mike a little bit ‘til he gets a band together,” he said. “He helps me out, comes back and plays with me sometimes. I’m just returning the favor.”

The high-profile departures were recent enough to prevent the temporary players from learning much material from the newly released Fired Up.

With Michael the only band member remaining from the recording sessions – banjo picker Jessie Baker left earlier – I can’t help but wonder what impact the personnel changes will have on sales of the CD in the early part of festival season. It’s hard to sell a new project if you don’t play the tunes. It also might hurt the band in IBMA awards voting, which gets underway soon. Right about now, Ken Irwin at Rounder Records can’t be a very happy camper.

Of course, all of that can change if Michael hires another batch of great pickers and gets back to giving festival crowds what they’ve come to expect over the years. And he’s certainly capable of doing that. He is, after all, a bluegrass hall-of-famer in the making, and many players would jump at the chance to be part of the magic.

Besides, the story line of a band leader faced with the challenge of filling some big shoes is as old as bluegrass, itself. That Monroe fellow did OK after Lester and Earl hit the road.

His people say Mike was too busy to talk Saturday, but he did say he expects to have news about his new band members soon. But for fans, getting the flame burning again can’t happen soon enough.

J.D. Crowe is back!

Just before he kicked off You Can Have Her on Friday afternoon, J.D. Crowe had a moment of doubt: “Can I really do this?”

But as the banjo rang loud and clear, he knew. The band knew. And the fans knew. Less than three months after he broke his arm and elbow in a fall, J.D. Crowe was back.

“You don’t know how long we’ve been waiting to hear that five,” Rickey Wasson said as the applause from the first song faded.

J.D. played a solid set and said he’d be ready that night for the second set, which he played as well. That he can play at all is something of a miracle. There were times after the injury that he said he wondered if he’d ever play again. His bandmates worried, too. Members of the New South said they were grateful for Jim Mills and Johnny Lewis being the main fill-ins for the legendary picker. But some promoters canceled dates and others cut the band’s fees, so there were natural concerns about their livelihoods.

But two weeks ago, bassist Kyle Perkins picked the phone and heard the boss say, “I’m ready.” Kyle asked if J.D. meant he wanted to travel with the band. “I’m ready to play,” J.D. said.

Rickey recently asked if he should line up a banjo backup in case J.D. needed a break or couldn’t play the second set. But J.D. said the same thing he said to Perkins: “I’m ready.”

In an interview after the first set, J.D. said he is still taking physical therapy because his left hand is stiff and his arm is weak. As part of his own therapy routine, he picked up the banjo about three weeks ago and played for 20 minutes a day, shooting for a comeback in June.

But when he saw the Gettysburg date on the calendar, he decided to shoot for this weekend. “I said, ‘well, hell, I have to start somewhere.’ ”

The test of the band broke into grins when J.D. nailed the kickoff of that first song, and from the audience it seemed like he was never gone. But J.D. could tell. “I didn’t have the energy in it that I usually have,” he told me. “I held back a bit. But, of course, most people don’t know that.”

J.D. said he never got morose, even when he didn’t know if he would pick again. “I’ve been there, done that,” he said. “You never know when you’ll pick your last.”

A report from Gettysburg

High gas prices and a chilly misty, rain didn’t seem to put much of a damper on Friday’s festivities at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. Here are some tidbits I picked up while wandering around, listening and catching up with some of the artists.

SHIFTING GEARS. Peter Rowan is writing new material, hoping to get back into the studio “sooner rather than later.” He’s also looking at bringing a more intimate feel to his performances.

“Putting a tour together for a band takes a lot of work,” he told me before the first of two sets. So he’s considering a series of solo house concerts, and intentionally limiting attendance.

The idea grew out of a recent songwriting workshop in which he could count the number of participants on one hand. Much better, he said, than a session crowded with two dozen people where learning is a challenge and teaching isn’t much fun.

Those who saw Rowan’s first set Friday, with his full band, were in for a treat. The former Bluegrass Boy commemorated Bill Monroe’s centennial year with a rousing tribute to his late boss and other bluegrass pioneeers, including a spot-on vocal on Blue Moon of Kentucky, and an inspired rendition of In the Pines. Rowan once told me that In the Pines is the touchstone for his own writing, and that Carter Stanley was one of his main songwriting influences because, “he really tried to tell it like it is.”

Rowan, too, still tells it like it is. He invited fans to visit the band in the merchandise tent after the set. “We’ll be over there gambling, with CD’s as our chips.”

The music business these days is, indeed, a gamble. Rowan made it clear Friday that he’s still all in.

ONE HAPPY MOM. Life on the road often means missing your family, but Rhonda Vincent is getting to see a lot of hers these days. Her daughters, Sally Berry and Tensel Sandker joined her on stage to share the vocals on When the Bloom is Off the Rose. An hour later, they were on the main stage with their own band, Next Big Thing.

Sally and Tensel shared a few bills with Rhonda last year, but now that their bluegrass studies at East Tennessee State University are winding down – they graduate in December – they’ll be touring more often this year.

“I see them so much more now,” Rhonda told me, making it clear that was a very good thing.

The Gettysburg fans were among the first to have a chance to buy Rhonda’s new project with Gene Watson, Your Money and My Good Looks. The official release date isn’t until next month. Those who call her the “Queen of Bluegrass” might be in for a surprise. The CD is straight from the George Jones-Tammy Wynette corner of country music, complete with drums, some honky-tonk piano and first-rate steel guitar work by Mike Johnson. It isn’t bluegrass, but it certainly is great music.

FAST ON THEIR FEET. The Gibsons have the brother act down pretty well, building on a rich legacy built by Carter and Ralph Stanley, the Louvin Brothers and the McReynolds boys. Their harmonies are among the tightest on the circuit right now. They’ve got the brother vs. brother schtick down, too. But anybody who thinks that part of the act is as rehearsed as the music found out that Leigh and Eric are first-class improvisers with wit as well as their instruments.

When Leigh’s voice cracked while he sang On the Other Side of Town, he quickly sang, “No matter what you do, don’t let your voice break on stage.”

At the end of the song, Leigh deadpanned, “I thought I was through with that puberty business.” Eric, older by 11 months, quickly jumped in.
“It’s not fair,” he said, setting up his, um, hair challenged brother. “It’s not fair losing your hair during puberty.”

COMING UP. If all goes well, Saturday will be J.D. Crowe’s first appearance on stage since breaking bones in a fall from his bus a few months back. It will also be the first appearance of Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper since the surprise departure of Tom Adams, Marshall Wilborn and Jesse Brock. Stay tuned!

Louisa Branscomb picks up the pieces

After a tornado tore through her north Georgia farm in late April, it’s no surprise songwriter Louisa Branscomb turned to music to help her cope. What did come as a surprise, she realized, is that she had already written the song that would get her through the darkest days in the wake of the devastation. The song is This Side of Heaven, on the recently released I’ll Take Love (From the Pen of Louisa Branscomb). She wrote it last year, inspired by an old log barn at her beloved Woodsong Farm and a Zen proverb: “If your building just burned down, there is more room to see the stars.”

In the song, God tells the farmer who watches the barn burn, “Without hard times, there’s no miracle for me to do.” Then comes a chorus so vivid and powerful I could feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck as Louisa recited it to me the other night:

This side of heaven there is heartache,
This side of heaven there is pain,
Sometimes you just can’t see
The rainbow for the rain.
So if heaven sends down lightning
And burns your building down
There’s just more room to see
The stars in heaven’s crown.

When she made it back from Tennessee, she found the shed roof had been sheared off by the wind, but the notched-log walls were still standing. The roof of the house was gone, too. And majestic, towering oaks had been tossed around like giant matchsticks. She remembers hugging her daughter and telling her, “We just need to concentrate on how great the view is.”

Weeks after the storm left its mark, Louisa admitted, “If I hadn’t written that song, I would not have known how to cope.”

These days find Louisa shuttling between her therapy practice in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and the farm. Spare minutes are spent maneuvering through the maze of red tape with insurance companies, contractors and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We haven’t even begun to deal with the devastation,” she says. “I think there will still be a Woodsong Farm. There’s just a lot to do to get there.” One of the biggest challenges is getting a green light for the work that needs to be done. “I’m trying to save this 150-year-old farmhouse,” she told me. “The insurance company wants me to tear it down.” Insurance won’t cover all the costs, so friends have started to raise money through a PayPal link on her web site.

Woodsong Farm is a special place because, Louisa notes, “this is where my music was anchored.” It’s also a place where songwriters gather for highly regarded workshops. The most recent one was held just over a week before the storm ripped through. Some of the participants, among the last people to see the farm intact, were among the first to return to help Louisa pick up the pieces. They worked all day, but saved a little time for a little picking some tunes at night.

To clear a little space during that last workshop, Louisa turned one of her prized possessions, her great-grandfather’s piano table, away from the wall. She forgot to put it back. Days later, the wall of the room was blown out by the storm. The out-of-position table was spared.

She knows she is luckier than many others, who lost loved ones and all of their possessions in the series of tornadoes that lashed across the region. And she knows much hard work lies ahead. “It feels like reality is setting in,” she said.

For now, she is focused on the little miracles, like the birds. On her first day back at the farm, she discovered an eerie silence. There were no birds. But on the second day, she was cheered to find bluebirds starting to build a new nest in the wreckage of her porch. And on the third day, the birds were singing again.

Surrounded by devastation, Louisa Branscomb is enchanted by nature’s music – and she’s trying to enjoy the view.

Louisa sent along this video of she and Joe Zauner offering a rendition of This Side of Heaven shot amidst the devastation on April 28, the day after the tornado hit.

This Side of Heaven © 2010 Millwheel Music
From I’ll Take Love (From the Pen of Louisa Branscomb) (as recorded by the Whites on Compass records)

She also shared these images taken just two weeks before the storm.

Hazel Dickens – An Appreciation

Sometime soon, the powers that be at IBMA will sit down to determine who to add to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Hazel Dickens’ name will come up. It always does. And the usual arguments will come up, too. They always do.

Something about how Hazel was folk and was never really bluegrass.

But here’s the other side of that argument. Hazel Dickens, who died Friday at 75, was a bluegrass pioneer. No Hazel Dickens singing gritty songs about women and blue collar workers? It’s very easy to imagine no Alison Krauss, Claire Lynch, Rhonda Vincent or Missy Raines either, at least as band leaders.

But this isn’t about politics. This is a tribute to a first-rate storyteller, whose music inspired generations of women and men and whose fight-for-the-underdog role will live on in her songs. Hazel left West Virginia, making her name in music in Baltimore and Washington, but West Virginia never left Hazel.

Raines says she is grateful for Hazel, the trailblazer. “Hazel paved the way for us all,” she told me. “She was a role model and she set a high mark of integrity, to which we all aspire.”

But Raines says she was first drawn to Hazel’s brand of music when the West Virginia native sang for the coal miners of Appalachia. “As a native West Virginian, I remember feeling that I could hear the honesty in her voice,” she said. “And sincerity and grit, the kind of grit that sustains you. I felt like she was giving those people a voice. She was singing for those who couldn’t. That meant a great deal to me.”

Rhonda Vincent, too, recalled Hazel as a path clearer.

“She was always encouraging and presented a perfect example of being who you are, through the authenticity of her music,” she said. “I appreciate her support of women in bluegrass music and will miss her very much. We love you, Hazel.”

The news of Hazel’s death, following a rough winter of sickness, hit Todd Phillips especially hard. Phillips, who played bass on a reunion tour featuring Hazel and longtime musical partner Alice Gerrard more than a decade ago, is producing a tribute project, with a star-studded lineup performing Hazel’s songs. Earlier this week, he told me he hoped to wrap up the project, 10 years in the making, in time for Hazel to enjoy. Today, I had the unfortunate task of telling him it wasn’t to be.

He said he knew that Ken Irwin, head of Rounder Records, had played some of the songs from the project for her, “but I wish she got to hold the final product in her hands.”

That project, and Hazel’s first solo project in years, have both been on hold for a long time, for reasons that the label hasn’t explained, and there’s no indication how her death will affect final decisions about the music.

In addition to cuts by Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Claire Lynch and others, Phillips is left with some wonderful memories of an American Songbird.

Phillips recalled the process when he needed to call Hazel to check lyrics. “Phone calls with her were never short.,” he chuckled. “You’d want to check on two words and you’d need to set aside an hour” to hear a story related to the song, perhaps how it came about, or something that happened one time when she performed it.

When he toured with her, he saw a side of Hazel that fans didn’t see. “She was full of funny stories,” he said. In many cases, her friends say, risqué stories. “She told stories on Lester Flatt that I can’t really repeat,” Phillips noted.

I got a glimpse of this side of Hazel last year at IBMA, when she joined Peter Rowan to present two awards at the IBMA gala. Rowan asked if Hazel remembered the rush she used to get from standing on stage. She quickly fired back, “I still have that rush, standing next to you.”

I was looking forward to chatting with Hazel again last weekend, when she was awarded the D.C. Bluegrass Union’s Washington Monument award. But she was too ill to attend the festival and claim her prize.

Lynn Morris recorded Hazel’s song, Mama’s Hands, which won IBMA song of the year, and her husband Marshall Wilborn often played bass when Hazel toured in recent years. The pair accepted the Washington Monument award for Hazel at the DCBU festival. “Hazel was a true and dear friend,” said Lynn in a recent email. “Her songs, and the way she delivered them, were, in the deepest, truest sense, original. It’s our treasure to have known her and shared so many wonderful times.”

So like everybody else who cherished Hazel, I’m left with the memories. And the music. And a sense that, for a while, we were in the midst of someone special.

Hazel Dickens had soul.

And Hazel Dickens had a bluegrass heart, no matter what the gatekeepers at the IBMA Hall of Fame may say.

Hazel Dickens passes

Hazel Dickens, a musical pioneer who paved the way for female bluegrass artists like Alison Krauss, Rhonda Vincent and Claire Lynch, died today at 75.

Dickens had been in ill health throughout the winter and was not able to be on hand last weekend when the D.C. Bluegrass Union presented her with its Washington Monument award for contributions to bluegrass.

Her death was confirmed by Ken Irwin, president of Rounder Records, her label.

There’s no word from Rounder on the fate of two projects with links to Hazel – her first solo CD in years and a star-studded tribute that has been in the works for a decade. The producer of that project, Todd Phillips, said Sunday that he hoped to wrap up the tribute while Hazel was alive.

We’ll offer an expanded appreciation of Hazel and her music later today.