Australia’s Bluegrass Parkway’s devotion to bluegrass music extends well beyond their execution. In fact, it’s incorporated in their name itself.
“It came from the highway connecting Lexington, Kentucky to I-65,” explains mandolin player Paul Duff. “My wife, Maria, is a native of Lexington, and we met while I was living there for a while. I used to drive down to Nashville as often as I could to go to The Station Inn to see bluegrass music. Back in those days, Bluegrass Parkway was a toll road. When it came to thinking up a name for the band in January of 1987, we wanted the word ‘Bluegrass’ in the title to let people in Australia know what we were about. I figured with the amount of tolls I’d paid on those trips the parkway owed me!”
These days, the band makes its home in Perth, Western Australia. “I was born and raised here, but Maria and I met in Lexington,” Duff continues. “After we had been together for a little while, we decided to move and settle in Perth. That was in 1986. We started the band in January 1987.”
The members of Bluegrass Parkway now include Duff, his wife Maria on double bass, Mick O’Neill on banjo, Wayne Perry on guitar, and Mick Patrick on fiddle. All the members take turns singing lead and contributing harmonies.
“We are a traditional bluegrass band in terms of our material and presentation,” Duff insists. “We have championed the use of the single microphone style of performance since around 1994. We also perform in suits, hats, and vintage ties. Maria performs in vintage-style dresses from the ’40s and ’50s. Our main influences varied a little in the early days, but for the most part, we focus on Bill Monroe’s music, as well as that of other members of the first generation of bluegrass musicians, such as the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, and others. Lately we’ve been having a lot of fun with the Osborne Brothers’ material.”
Duff adds that the band tours extensively, initially beginning in various parts of their native Australia, and in New Zealand, before eventually taking in three different tours of the US that included Tennessee, Missouri, North Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and, as Duff notes, “probably a couple of other states I’ve forgotten.”
They’ve performed at quite a few Stateside festivals as well, some of them multiple times. Over the years, they’ve included Festival of the Bluegrass, ROMP, the World of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe’s Bean Blossom Festival, and the Poppy Mountain Festival.
“The best-known artist we’ve played with — and continue to play with — is Mike Compton,” Duff continues. “Mike visits Australia often, and we always play a few shows with him when he’s touring. He played with us at ROMP during one of our tours, and he’s become a close friend to all of us. The other well-known artist we’ve performed with was Roland White. We first met Roland in 1998 when he came to Australia to play at the Harrietville Bluegrass Festival in Victoria. Many years later, we got to play a concert with him in Nashville. Mike Compton joined us for that one as well.”
Like many bluegrass bands that ply their trade in other countries, Bluegrass Parkway initially found themselves encountering audiences that weren’t necessarily familiar with the form. “When we first started performing in 1987, we felt our performances here in Australia became a little bit of an educational process for the audiences, as bluegrass wasn’t necessarily a well-known or understood musical genre,” Duff recalls. “That’s one of the reasons why we decided to wear the traditional stage clothes and perform around a single mic. It was to show audiences where this music came from.”
Happily, they made an impression. “British folk music was the most common style played at festivals here, but since then, things have really changed,” Duff says. “We’ve been very warmly embraced by local audiences, and bluegrass has really grown. In those early days, we didn’t even know there were bluegrass festivals. That’s when we first started touring. Bluegrass is very popular now, and there are festivals presented here every year. Young musicians are embracing the music as well as the old timey music.”
To date, Bluegrass Parkway has recorded seven albums. “Our focus has really been about exploring the traditional elements of bluegrass,” Duff declares. “We have done a few originals, but have also tended to search for the less commonly recorded material from the archives, because we think there is so much wonderful material out there.”
He also has a decided opinion as to why bluegrass enjoys such widespread popularity. “Well, I’m a living example, and I think what happened to me is probably the answer,” he replies. “I was 19 years old, had never played music, and had never heard of bluegrass music. I walked into a tavern in Fremantle, the port city of Perth, where a bluegrass band was playing. By the end of the night I walked thinking, ‘I have to play that music!’ It was a hugely cathartic experience for me, and it totally changed the direction of my life.”
In addition to his role with the band, Duff is a dedicated luthier. He first began building his own mandolins in 1982, an enterprise which was spawned from that initial encounter. Back then, it was rare to walk into a venue and witness bluegrass being performed. The need to find a better-sounding mandolin than the cheap one he initially bought inspired him to build his own.
“I think bluegrass deals in universal human themes — love, lost love, hard life experiences, struggles, the pain of loss, family, a longing for home,” Duff concludes. “The other quality that bluegrass music seems to overwhelmingly display is that of authenticity. I can’t count the number of times audience members have commented to us how authentic the music feels.”
The band’s recordings can be found on bandcamp.
