J2B2 at at the Cain Center in Cornelius, NC (11/8/24) – photo © Vivian Pennington Hopkins
J2B2 (John Jorgenson’s Bluegrass Band) just wrapped up their 2024 touring season, and before returning to southern California, I had an opportunity to sit down and talk with two of the founding members, Jorgenson and Herb Pedersen, about themselves and their musical quartet before a show on November 8 at the Cain Center in Cornelius, NC.
Playing a variety of genres of music in his career, Jorgenson has toured with Elton John, led a gypsy jazz band, and played country music. At some point, he realized that he missed the bluegrass of his younger days, so he reached out to a fellow west coast picker, Herb Pedersen, and J2B2 was formed. That was a decade ago, and they are still going strong.
Jorgenson, a musical prodigy, has been performing since his youth. A defining moment that marked his musical journey was when, “I was 15 playing in a rock band with older friends that were in college. We were playing at a college dance and about 2/3 of these college kids were standing on tables, stamping their feet, and yelling for more. I went, ‘I want to do this for the rest of my life!,” and that’s just what he has done.
Pedersen had a similar epiphany when he subbed once for Earl Scruggs. He shared what led him to that life changing event.
“I was a big fan of Flatt & Scruggs. I worked for Lester Flatt briefly when Earl was in the hospital back in 1967, so there’s a real kinship there. I was actually a Foggy Mountain Boy for a while. They came out to California and performed which is very rare. They were at the Ash Grove, and we came out every night. Back then, you would perform at a club for two weeks. Ed Pearl who owned the Ash Grove hired them. There was hardly anybody there during weekdays, but the weekends, it was full. They had a very far-reaching effect on a lot of us out there.”
80-year-old Pedersen started his musical trek at age 11 on a Stella guitar that his mom had stuffed in the closet. She taught her son a few chords.
“She got me started. I was really in love with harmony singing at that point. The Everly Brothers were right down my wheelhouse. It morphed into getting into folk music with the Kingston Trio and more urban-type groups: the Limelighters and the Highway Men to the New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger and John Cohen). From there, I was going up to Discount Records on Telegraph Avenue in Berkley to see what new albums with banjo were being released. A guy came up behind me and said, ‘You like banjo, huh? Well, check this out.’ And he held up the Mercury Recordings of Flatt & Scruggs with the two red coats. I thought, ‘What is this?’ I took it home and put it on my folks’ hi-fi, and the first tune I heard was Salty Dog Blues. That was a big rabbit hole that I dove down and I didn’t look back. I was 16 or 17.
The next album that came out was Foggy Mountain Banjo on Columbia. That was an instrumental album where Earl did all of his great banjo playing.”
Pedersen then shared a nugget of music history.
“I was told that Lester didn’t play guitar on that album. He stayed in Sparta with Gladys, his wife. He said, ‘Why am I going all the way into town to play guitar on something that I’m not going to sing on?’ Josh Graves played the guitar.”
Earl’s picking motivated Pedersen to purchase his first banjo at age 16.
“Earl taught me with a needle drop on the LP,” the California banjoist confessed, referencing listening repeatedly to the vinyl album on a record player.
Pedersen says that he was driven to learn the five-string. “I had to do it. I had no choice with my life.”
Self-taught, Pedersen didn’t have the Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo instruction book until much later in life, after he was playing professionally.
“I was at Earl’s house and he asked, ‘Did you ever kindly read my book?,’ and I said, ‘No and that’s the one Bill Keith put together, right?’ Bill, God bless him, wrote out all those solos exactly the way Earl played them. If you read tablature, you could pick up on that. If you didn’t, it was really difficult. I was an ear-trained guy and didn’t read much for banjo.
I came to Nashville in 1967 to work with two guys from Arkansas, Vern Williams and Ray Park. They were like the Louvin Brothers, really good singers. I added a third voice to make a trio. We came to Nashville to try and split the atom and get some work. It wasn’t happening. Nashville was in a dry county and there was no live music in town except Printer’s Alley. It dried up for us.
We got a job working for Eddie Hill who had a morning TV show in Nashville. It was on Channel 5 just below in the LNC Building in the basement. The studio was great; the house band made up of Nashville players was great. Eddie liked the way we did our traditional stuff so he had us on every other week. That’s when I got a job with Carl Tipton & the Midstate Playboys. He was a disc jockey in Murfreesboro. He was doing an hour-long live bluegrass show every Saturday on Channel 8, 12:00-1:00, then Ernest Tubb would roll in for an hour. After him came the Stoneman Family. It was a great mixture of country music from the traditional to the modern. Buddy Emmons was playing with Ernest. It was great!
Earl saw me on that show, called up, and said, ‘I’d like you to come over to the house.’ I said, ‘Who is this?!’ I thought it was someone pranking me from California. I had no idea. He said, ‘Well, this is Earl Scruggs. I’d love for you to come over and bring your banjo with you.’ Then I recognized his voice. The only time that I had ever heard him speak was on the Carnegie Hall record on Mama Blues, when he asks, ‘What on earth do you want, son?’ I said, ‘I’d be honored to come over and would love to meet you.’ I was 23.
I drove over to his house the next day and sat in front of his place for about 10 minutes. I said, ‘It’s going to be horrible or it’s going to be a turning point (in my career).’ I knocked and Louise’s secretary answered the door. She saw my banjo case and said, ‘Do you want to see Earl?’ I introduced myself, then Louise came out, and then Earl. He said, ‘Let’s pick a few.’
He picked up Randy’s guitar and told me to pick up the banjo. We played the Martha White Theme, Salty Dog Blues, and tunes that they do on their show. He put the guitar down and said, ‘Well, I kind of got you here under false pretenses. I have to have a hip operation and will be laid up for a few weeks. I was wondering if you’d like to fill-in for me?’ I just heard buzzing in my head. I can’t remember what was going on, but I felt like I was on acid or something. I asked, ‘Do you think I can do that?’ He responded, ‘Well, I’ve seen you live and you play great and you sing good. I’d like to take you down to the Friday Night Opry and you can meet the fellows.’
I drove home, but I kind of forgot where I lived and I wasn’t that far from his house. I was in Madison and so was he. I couldn’t believe it was happening. He picked me up in his Cadillac and we drove down to the Opry. We went in the Ryman up those stone stairs behind Tootsie’s. The gruff old security guard asked, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘I’m with him,’ pointing to Earl.
It was like the book, Rock Dreams, an illustration of rock-n-roll scenes drawn by people who were in bands at that time and have fantasies of ‘wouldn’t it be great if we had these guys in the group?’ They would draw really nice pictures of the Stones, the Beatles. I saw Lester and Paul Warren standing over by the shoe shine stand. Earl took me over and introduced me, ‘He’s the boy from California that I was telling you about.’ Lester threw his guitar behind his back and said, ‘How you doing there, young’un?’ We had a great time and there was no pressure from that point on. They made me feel really relaxed.”
So Pedersen subbed on the banjo as a Foggy Mountain Boy for a few weeks.
“It was quite an experience. I compare it with what Marty Stuart went through, though he was even younger. We’ve actually talked about that. It’s a fond memory.”
Jorgenson shared his own personal bluegrass history…
“I played bluegrass almost steadily from 1979 to 1988 at Disneyland in California. I would play six to seven sets a day, five or six days a week. That’s a lot of playing!
I met Chris Hillman and got the idea to form the Desert Rose Band in 1985. Later that year, I met Herb. He came in to play with Chris and myself and Bill Bryson backing up Dan Fogelberg. At the time, I was hearing Chris’ songs and thinking, ‘These need to be in a full six-piece band with drums and pedal steel.’ I orchestrated that and we became a band. The Desert Rose Band was getting pretty busy and I wasn’t getting to play bluegrass anymore.
Lots of other stuff happened. I left Desert Rose and formed the Hellecasters. Then Elton John called me to play and I finished touring with him in the early 2000s. Around 2003, I was on a plane with Brad Davis and he was playing with Earl Scruggs. I said, ‘Oh, I’d love to play with Earl Scruggs.’ He said, ‘Ok. I’ll see if I can make that happen.’ He talked to Louise and Earl and there was a spot for me. They were using an electric guitar player and an acoustic guitar player. They brought me in as an electric guitar player, but I kind of snuck the mandolin in there because I wanted to play mandolin, too. I was thrilled to play with Earl, Randy, and Gary. Glen Duncan played fiddle. Sometimes Jennifer Kennedy would play dobro and sometimes Jerry Douglas would play dobro. I was getting to play bluegrass again after so many years of not getting to play it.
When Mr. Scruggs passed away, there wasn’t really a chance to play bluegrass anymore for me. No one was asking for me to be in a band, so I just started a band. I had tried before I put together this band (J2B2). I tried to put together a band with Jennifer Kennedy, John Randall, and Mike Bub. We did a showcase and were planning on getting booked at Grey Fox. My agent at the time was pushing Grey Fox to hire my gyspy jazz quintet so the bluegrass booking never happened. Then the energy from that kind of dissipated.
I missed playing bluegrass music. I knew Herb wasn’t playing the banjo much anymore so I thought he’d want to start a band with me. At the same time, I’d become friends with Mark Fain and I’d heard that he had left Ricky Skaggs’ band. I thought, ‘Hey, maybe I can recruit him!’ And he was up for it.
I kept John Randall as a holdover from that first idea. The four of us got together and pretty quickly recorded an album in 2014 at Sheryl Crow’s studio, Crow’s Nest. She was a friend of John’s and offered us to use her studio. It came out really well and we started doing a little bit of touring. I remember the first time that we played on the Opry. We had an arrangement of John’s song, Whiskey Lullaby, and usually there’s a lot of people talking back stage and not listening. Larry Gatlin was on our segment. It got all quiet and it was really a moment. Somebody said to me when we came off stage, ‘Wow! Y’all even got Larry Gatlin to be quiet and listen.’
John had twins and young children. His songwriting career was doing very well and his wife’s songwriting career was doing very well. It was too difficult for their family for him to leave to perform. So we got Patrick Sauber in 2016. Patrick had already played in a group with Herb and Bill Bryson and Patrick’s dad, Tom Sauber. He was already part of the fold. That energy kind of pulled it all together.”
Sauber added, “It’s been a good decade. These guys are great. Herb and I have been playing together for almost 20 years now in various configurations. That’s always a joy.”
He plays guitar and mainly sings the low part in the trios. “We switch around so anyone can sing any part in this band. It makes it more entertaining and keeps you on your toes. It’s different material. It’s not all straight, down-the-middle bluegrass so it’s fun for me. It’s good for me to branch out.”
Fain, a founding member of J2B2 and bassist in the band, related, “It’s fun. It gives me time to travel, and to be home. It’s a fun band to go out and play four or five shows a month. I’ve been doing this since I was 14. I played with Ricky Skaggs for 18 years and do sessions.”
With three of the members (Jorgenson, Pedersen, and Sauber) on the west coast, and Fain in Nashville, full band rehearsals aren’t really practical. Most of the arrangements are derived by Jorgenson.
“I’ve always been kind of an arranger. That’s how I grew up so it’s natural for me to do that, but it’s not a dictatorship. If someone else has another song or idea, then that’s fine, too.”
Pedersen interjected, “I brought in this song called True, He’s Gone. It is like a blues tune. It’s now part of the show.”
“John and I will kind of skull out the tune that we want to do,” Herb explained. “Then we’ll bring Patrick over and rehearse out there. Mark’s such an easy study. He listens to it once and writes out a bass chart and he’s got it.”
Jorgenson agreed. “Yea, he just jumps right in there.”
Fain agreed, saying, “We don’t rehearse. I chart it out, but don’t use charts on stage. I remember them. It’s easy enough.”
Pedersen joked about Fain. “Mark’s just too lazy to sing. I know he can.”
For instrument geeks, the band takes an impressive arsenal on the road. Pedersen was picking a Sonny Osborne model Recording King banjo that Sonny designed with Greg Rich.
“I got it from the Buffalo Brothers’ Music Store in San Diego. They had a display. I saw it had Sonny’s name on it so I picked it up and started playing it, and the guy gave it to me.”
Jorgenson shared, “I’m playing the only Gibson F5 that I’ve ever owned. I bought it new in 1980. It was called the F5-L when Gibson was trying to go back to making their mandolins like they did in the 1920s. Every chip and wear on that thing is from me and I love it.”
Sauber picks the most prized instrument, a 1935 D-28 Herringbone. On tour, Fain plays an upright electric bass.
When asked about plans for the band’s future, Jorgenson admitted, “Ever since COVID, I’ve not been thinking that far ahead. I’ve been more grateful for what has come in. For that time, we couldn’t perform at all. I used to project out, but now I am more allowing for anything to happen.”
Jorgenson has to juggle his various ensembles.
“They’re not balanced. J2B2 plays more than my jazz quintet, which used to play a lot. I asked my agent, ‘Why is that?,’ and he said, ‘It’s easier for me to sell something with vocals.’ Before this, I played for James Burton’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. To be part of that was really fantastic. I played a Ricky Nelson song with Elvis Costello that Burton had played on as a young man. Things like that come up every now and then, kind of special events. Herb, Mark, and I with Steve Duncan and JD Maness all collaborated with Peter Frampton for a song on a Neil Young Tribute album. It is to raise awareness and raise money for his bridge school for developmentally disabled children. Steven Marley (Bob Marley’s son), The Doobie Brothers, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, all kinds of people are on this album. I’m trying not to plan, just do everything as well as I can as it comes in.”
Pedersen added, “What’s been happening after our shows, I have people come up and say, ‘I didn’t really like bluegrass so much, but I love you guys. There’s a festival in this town…’ That’s just free advertising for us.”
Jorgenson noted, “I just say you tell the people (at the festival) that we’ll come if they want us.”
“If you build it, they’ll come,” responded Pedersen.
When posed with identifying his favorite genre of music, Jorgenson pondered a moment.
“That’s pretty hard. I grew up with classical music, playing piano, and studied classical clarinet and bassoon. Then I played guitar in rock bands with my friends. Then I learned bluegrass and gypsy jazz. I really can’t just pick one. Like I said previously, I wasn’t getting to play bluegrass, so I missed it enough to I create a band so I could play it. Other genres (classical, rock, jazz, country) sort of happen naturally, but bluegrass had to be formed to be able to play. No one dropped it in my lap. My heart said, ‘I’ve got to play some bluegrass.’ That’s a pretty strong one.”
Pedersen weighed in on this as well.
“My favorite is country music. Anybody that doesn’t like Merle Haggard’s Pancho and Lefty, I don’t have much reason to talk to them. Country music and bluegrass are the ones that motivate me. As a songwriter [Old Train, Wait A Minute], I listen to a lot of different singer/songwriters from the old days like John Prine or even Beach Boys stuff. Being in California, you’re surrounded by all kinds of great music.”
Jorgenson shared a favorite venue. “We just played in Italy in a 15th century chapel, and it was so beautiful. It sounded so beautiful. It had high ceilings and was very ornate with pink carved marble.”
“We could have done it acoustically without microphones,” Pedersen stressed. “The acoustics were so amazing.”
John concluded…
“When we played a concert in Prague, the hostess told us how bluegrass was really part of their culture. I thought that was odd. They said in the cold war days the only place people could go to speak freely was out in the woods, hiking and camping. They would take their instruments, guitars, banjos, and mandolins, with them and sing around the campfire. They would create Czech lyrics to all the bluegrass songs.
At our concert, I asked them if they would sing Herb’s song Wait A Minute back to us in Czech, and they did. It was phenomenal. It was a goose bumps moment.”
You can keep up with all things J2B2 online.
