Bill Graham is reporting over at Mandolin Cafe that plans for the Bill Monroe film biography we have discussed previously seem to be well under way.
The project is the brainchild of actor Peter Sarsgaard and his wife and fellow actor, Maggie Gyllenhaal. The pair will take the roles of Bill Monroe and Bessie Lee Maudlin, with T-Bone Burnett assuming music production.
According to Graham’s piece…
Producer Trevor Jolly tells the Mandolin Cafe that “we have just completed the first round of prerecords of the music for the movie. T-Bone Burnett and Ronnie McCoury supervised the 10-day recording session in Nashville at Sound Emporium with a huge contingent of A-list musicians, and the initial mixes sound spectacular.”
Jolly said former Monroe protege, Del McCoury, will sing the Monroe songs on the soundtrack.
Mandolin Cafe and Northfield Mandolins are giving away a Model NF-F5M F-Style mandolin, valued at $2500.
To enter, you simply need to provide your name and email address before January 31. Only one entry is allowed per email, and no registration with Mandolin Cafe is required.
We understand that more than 2,000 entries have been received as of this afternoon.
Northfield invites everyone to visit them online, on Facebook or via their Twitter feed for more information about their instruments.
First off, the questions came from members and readers of the site who, secondly, are mandolinists themselves, giving the interview a tone of musical seriousness, as this example shows.
Question from RE Simmers: The tenor you sang with the Country Gents was very high. In Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver you always have one excellent tenor singer and most of the time you have two. What was the reason that you switched from tenor to baritone?
Doyle Lawson: I started out singing baritone and playing banjo for Jimmy Martin. When I went to work with J.D. Crowe, I was mostly singing lead. I started singing tenor because we had no one to do it. Gordon Scott had been working with us while he was a student at U.K. When he graduated he moved on to make his degree worth all the time he took to get it. Anyway, my range was pretty good and I just started to get stronger and sing higher with it. Playing mandolin and singing tenor was what I became known for. In 1979 I formed Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and I wanted to break the ties that connected me to the Country Gentlemen. I had been with Crowe a little over 5 years and the Country Gentlemen 7 1/2 years. These were all great years for me but I wanted to sound different than what I had been doing. So, with that in mind, I began experimenting with different vocal arrangements. Sometimes I would sing lead, sometimes baritone and sometimes tenor.
Lou Reid, Jimmy Haley and Terry Baucom are all excellent vocalists and all could sing multiple harmony parts. That made it even easier to make the transition.
The interview began with the posting of a short biography of the icon, and embedded mp3 of a track from Sam’s latest CD (available as a free download from Sam’s website if you follow the directions given here), and followed by a Q&A interview where the questions were provided by readers of the Mandolin Cafe.
The questions are wide ranging, covering a number of topics including: the relationship between fiddle and mandolin playing, strings, Sam’s chop, leading a band, what’s on Sam’s iPod, Hoss, the Cardinals’ chances during the 2010 season, and many more.
The interview ends with a run down of Sam’s gear, and a discography. It is accompanied by several interesting youtube videos and a handful of pictures.
Last week we had news of a new book of fiction based on the popular Del McCoury hit, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. Reading Mandolin Cafe this morning, we learned of another new novel with a bluegrass theme.
Valentine’s Fall is the latest offering from Canadian Cary Fagan, an award-winning author of children’s books, whose non-fiction writing and commentary also appears in a number of Canadian papers. He has authored a number of books for older readers as well, but this will be his first with a bluegrass twist.
The book, due October 1 from Cormorant Books, tells the story of Huddie Rosen, whose high school life is marred by the death of his best friend in a foolish stunt (Valentine’s Fall), and who discovers a love for bluegrass music when he moves from Toronto to live in Tennessee.
I would say that the author captures much of the spirit of the music in this brief passage from the book, inspired by hearing a recording of Bill Monroe playing Get Up John at the first Fincastle Bluegrass Festival in 1965:
“Monroe’s mandolin is backed only by Peter Rowan on guitar. His playing is very fast but not blistering, a cascade of vibrating rhythm, of changing doublestops and open drone strings, of the sound both delicate and rough that he could draw from his 1924 Gibson Lloyd Loar mandolin. He plays a series of variations, making the rhythm surge here, hang back there, suddenly thrashing his pick in successive downstrokes, touching the high harmonic note like a bell. It’s just the most alive, most human sound I have ever heard. You can feel the energy pouring from his hands into that small instrument. It’s as if he could go on for ever or might begin to falter, but he does neither, he makes the music rise like a wave, hold there, and then, in a touching anticlimax, quit. It would be like Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations or Pablo Casals’s Cello Suites if they had written what they were playing.
The thing about music is that you can trust it. It’s emotionally reliable. Playing or listening, it gives you what you need, when you need it. A lot of the time, that has seemed like enough to me. But it isn’t enough. That’s what I have sometimes failed to remember.”
Here’s a brief video synopsis of the story…
There is a preview of the book available online at the publisher’s web site. Pre-orders are also available online.
Serious students of the mandolin have long revered the name of Lloyd Loar, the Gibson luthier from the 1920s whose design innovations during his brief 5 year tenure are widely credited with revolutionizing their fretted instruments. Gibson’s most prized mandolins are still built to his specs, and vintage F-5s signed by Lloyd Loar command astronomical prices in the secondary market.
Bill Graham has written a lengthy piece for Mandolin Cafe detailing his visit to the site of Gibson’s old shop in Kalamazoo, MI, where Loar once roamed the halls. The facility is now the home of the Heritage Guitar Company and Graham interviewed Ren Wall, who had worked there for Gibson for more than 20 years. Like a number of other Gibson employees, when the company moved to Nashville in 1984, Wall remained in Kalamazoo to ply his trade with Heritage.
The article is full of details that will of interest to any fan of the vintage Gibson instruments, and the “old school” methods of manufacture still is use at Heritage. Graham also has a number of photos from his visit.
Here’s a taste of the article, describing his first arriving at the shop…
Loar had formal ties to Gibson starting in 1911 as a music composer, arranger and performer, Siminoff said. He may have visited Kalamazoo when the Gibson Co. made instruments at previous factory sites on East Exchange Place and East Harrison Court.
But by 1919 when Loar began his longest stint as a designer for Gibson, 225 Parsons Street was a modern, state-of-the-art factory building. By the early 1920s he was working at the plant fulltime in various roles, according to Siminoff. The F5 mandolin and other refined carved-top instruments that he helped design and build until his departure late in 1924 would change the musical world forever.
I came looking for what is and shadows of what was.
A worker was having a smoke break outside an arched entryway with a wooden door that says Heritage Guitar Inc. with a cutout of an F5 mandolin underneath. I told him I was looking for Ren Wall. Former Gibson employees started Heritage in 1985 in what Siminoff says “they always kindly referred to as the old building,” a place where Gibson built mandolins and banjos right up until they left in 1984.
“Ren’s here,” the gentleman said. “Go on in. Go down through this door, down the stairs and through the next door and look for him on the left.”
I did, and stepped into a large room with offices on my left, a guy gluing binding on a guitar on my right, sawdust and wood and instrument part shapes and equipment in front of me for a long ways.
Scott Tichenor, proprietor of Mandolin Cafe, shot us a note about some photos published yesterday on his site.
Cafe member John Fields posted several pictures he took of Bill Monroe on tour in England during 1996, which he had waylaid and only recently rediscovered. They show Big Mon with Richard Greene on fiddle, Lamar Grier on banjo, Peter Rowan on guitar and James Monroe on bass.
The photos show some damage from time, but do offer an interesting glimpse at some never-before-seen images of our dear, departed Patriarch.
Our friends over at Mandolin Cafe are running a contest for the next month where the winner will receive a new Eastman mandolin.
The prize in Eastman’s new 815V F-style mandolin, which is made with a carved, red spruce top, flamed maple back and sides, and finished with an oil varnish.
Entry registrations can be completed online, where you can also read all the rules and regs for this contest.
The folks at Acoustic Disc are offering free daily downloads from their web site. A different track will be available each day from one of their many fine audio recordings.
Acoustic Disc is the label owned by David Grisman, and tracks from his many fine releases will be among the mandocentric offerings provide as free downloads. These files are in the MP3 format and a new one will be posted around 2:00 a.m. (EST) each day.
All proceeds from the sale will go to Butch’s Medical Fund.
This is a “Fern” style mandolin, described on Gruhn’s site as follows:
This instrument (sn 70920020) was signed Sept. 20, 2007 by Dave Harvey. It features tone bar bracing, gold-plated hardware, hand-stained finish, rectangular hard case and full warranty. MSLP is $8443.
Bids are submitted by email, and will be accepted through Monday, December 3, at 2:00 p.m. (EST). Bidding details, and some additional photos, can be seen on the Gruhn Guitars web site.
Several other newly donated instruments will be offered for sale in a similar manner over the net few months, including a Collings MT, a Weber F-style and a Trinity College Celtic mandola.
With regard to Butch’s health, Mandolin Cafe has posted a very encouraging report from just before Thanksgiving.
It has been a very upbeat couple of weeks at the Baldassari household and once again, I am in the “pinching myself mode.” Butch awakened last Wednesday, sat up in bed and said, “My legs are back!” It was fantastic! He walked around fast and straight and didn’t miss a beat. That night he joined us at church supper where Blake and I go every (other) Wednesday alone. Many of our church family took note of, not only his presence but, the fact that Butch was doing laps, almost in sing-song rhythm, around Fellowship Hall!
