Just over a year ago since their debut at the IBMA Award Show at the Ryman Auditorium, The Masters of Bluegrass – Del McCoury, JD Crowe, Bobby Osborne, Bobby Hicks and Jerry McCoury – will be making their last appearance together at The Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples, Florida, on December 8.
The bluegrass super-group boasts four Bluegrass Hall of Fame members and two Grand Ole Opry cast members. The quintet has played at festivals and done concert appearances; making 16 shows in all (excluding the coming show), delighting fans in North Carolina, New Jersey, Tennessee, Virginia and California.
Individually, they each bring decades worth of experience appearing at numerous festivals; on theatre and concert hall stages; on TV and radio; for 50 years they have carried a brightly-lit traditional bluegrass music torch wherever they have gone.
Supporting the Masters of Bluegrass at Sunday’s show are the Rambling Rooks – featuring Ronnie Bowman, Don Rigsby and Kenny Smith, each former Lonesome River Band members and three of the most admired and influential musicians of the past 20 years.
The 2013 Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion continued today, and not even the rain that soaked the festival for a few hours could dampen the enthusiasm. Bluegrass lovers knew they could find several top groups playing on various stages around Bristol, TN/VA today. Artists were invited to tour the Birthplace of Country Music Cultural Heritage Center, which is still under construction but sure to be a destination worth checking out when it’s completed. Multiple acts nominated for 2013 IBMA awards appeared on the Country Mural Stage today. Detour, Donna Ulisse, Breaking Grass, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, The Claire Lynch Band, Della Mae, The Travelin’ McCourys, The Masters of Bluegrass, and Balsam Range all delivered an outstanding day of entertainment.
It is almost impossible to boil a whole day of fantastic music down to a few sentences. All of the acts did a great job and the fans were thrilled. Notable today was a big dose of rain. In fact, about 6 hours worth. As the rain rolled in, Breaking Grass was burning up the stage with their performance. Several people who had not seen the band before were so impressed that they were still commenting on the band later in the evening. A great young band, to be sure.
Was it a coincidence that Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen followed Breaking Grass? I don’t know, but Frank and the guys kept applying the heat. As always, the guys had a great set. If you are a friend of Frank Solivan on Facebook you know he’s just finished building a new mandolin. He brought it along on this trip and played it for this set. It looked and sounded great. Well done, Frank!
Della Mae ramped up the energy as the temps cooled a bit in the evening. These young ladies, brought energy, outstanding musicianship, and beautiful harmonies to the stage. They were joined for one song (I only wish I could remember which one) by Jason Carter on fiddle, as he and Kimber Ludiker played double fiddle beautifully. Guitarist Courtney Hartman later joined The Travelin’ McCourys to help them put together an impressive performance later in the evening.
As might be expected, the largest crowd of the evening turned out for The Masters of Bluegrass. Although Bobby Osborne couldn’t make the show, Ronnie McCoury filled in on mandolin and vocals. If you haven’t had a chance to see this group together, you owe it to yourself to catch one of these shows. When you put J.D. Crowe, Bobby Hicks, Del McCoury and Jerry McCoury on the stage together, you get a dynamic that just doesn’t happen often. There was obviously some great music, but it was easy to tell that they J.D., Bobby, Del, Jerry and Ronnie were really having fun while creating this music for the appreciative crowd. Bobby Hicks even stepped up to the mic to sing a solo on a Felice Bryant song, We Could. How special was this set? Several of the bands that performed earlier in the day came back to watch The MOB do their set. Just check out Frank Solivan and the guys from Dirty Kitchen enjoying the show from front row seats.
Balsam Range started their day much earlier when the rain drove them off of the Near Moore Stage and under a ramp to a parking garage. The fans followed them and the Balsam Range guys put together a great set while playing “under the bridge.” Who needs a stage? The Balsam Range guys wrapped up the day well after midnight ON the Country Mural Stage. Their rendition of One Way Out brought down the house, and the second day of the Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion was in the books. It was a day to remember.
I owe a special thanks to Alane Anno of Alane Anno Photography for the quality photos today. Thanks for all the work, and for sharing, Alane!
The main stage of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival has felt the tapping toes of many a legend over the last 40 years. From late greats such as Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Doc Watson, to the talents of today who bring their experiences to the crowd with each note sung and played. Two such modern-day living legends have played sets in Telluride: Emmylou Harris and Del McCoury.
Of course, both of these musicians were joined on stage by fabled pickers in their own right, Rodney Crowell with Emmylou on Thursday night and the, “Masters of Bluegrass,” Bobby Osborne, J.D. Crowe, Jerry McCoury, and Bobby Hicks with Del on Friday. I’m specifically mentioning Emmylou Harris and Del McCoury within this list of legends, as I’ve seen them both several times and I feel that the music played at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival these last few days was the best I’ve ever heard them.
With a phenomenal pedal steel player and the classic country vocals of Rodney Crowell, Emmylou was truly rocking. Swaying and stomping to the music, she brought Return of the Grievous Angel, Wheels, and Poncho and Lefty to the audience with the first opening numbers. Friend and collaborator, Sam Bush, joined the band for a few numbers and brought his ever-present vivacity to the show. There was new energy pushing classic songs.
A few songs into the Masters of Bluegrass set, Del stepped up to the mic with a solo vocal honky tonk number that had the crowd cheering loudly after individual notes he hit. I was in awe listening to the true high lonesome ways of Del McCoury – and I feel that awe was shared with all around me. Del was letting it all out with his lead vocals, but I was absolutely sold upon the first song as Del McCoury, Bobby Osborne, and J.D. Crowe gathered around the single mic with three-part soaring harmonies on Blue Ridge Cabin Home.
This was the first time in a long time where my ears actually hurt due to the piercing tenor. This is a certain type of pain that I had been missing and it was invigorating.
Here is a gallery of images that Lexington, KY photographer Estill Robinson shot during this past weekend’s Festival of the Bluegrass. This first batch captures Masters Of Bluegrass on stage, a supergroup that includes Del McCoury, Bobby Osborne, J.D. Crowe, Bobby Hicks and Jerry McCoury.
This report on the 2013 Festival of the Bluegrass is a contribution from Jim & Valerie Gabehart. Jim shared the review, and Valerie the photos. We have a great many additional photos to share taken by Estil Robertson. Look for those over the next few days.
What does a working musician do when he/she gets a weekend off? If it happens to the be the weekend of the 40th Festival of the Bluegrass in Lexington, Kentucky, the answer is go listen to some great music. There are plenty of things that need done around our home (the joys of home ownership nobody tells you about, or you don’t listen to, when that dream house you built ages about 20 years and becomes a nightmare on Elm Street), and summer weekends at home are rarer since we decided to get active in touring with our music a few years ago. I was figuring to check a few items off the honey-do list when Valerie called me at work on Thursday afternoon and suggested we make last minute plans for a weekend getaway. After scouring the event listings for the weekend, I was happy to find our open weekend coincided with the 40th Festival of the Bluegrass in Lexington, less than three hours away from our home.
The Kentucky Horse Park is a great facility, easily found, easily accessed (no holler, mountainside, gravel road obstacle course), with hundreds of full hookup campsites in addition to primitive camping and well laid out day parking areas near the stage. Dailey & Vincent were taking the stage as we arrived, and their performance proved why they’ve become a juggernaut of sorts since their formation a relatively few years ago. Although criticized by many for straying from mainstream bluegrass, the variety they offer can hardly be matched by any other band in bluegrass and given an extended (90 minute) set, they included something for everyone and elicited what appeared to be the strongest response from the audience of the two days we spent at the festival.
In addition to their variety in material, the scripted and unscripted humor, impressions (among others, regular banjoist Jessie Baker did a very good Grand Ole Opry performance of Lester Flatt and Marty Robbins), Gospel quartets (featuring Christian Davis, who I believe is one of the best, if not the best, bass vocalists ever in bluegrass music), tight harmony, and great musicianship, one thing unmatched throughout the rest of the weekend was the quality of sound in their show. This is not intended as a negative commentary toward the “house” sound technicians, but a sound technician who knows the group (their material, arrangements, their tones, habits, strengths and weaknesses, etc.) starts with a huge advantage. Whatever the reason, Dailey & Vincent sound technician Key Chang had them sounding better, more consistently throughout their show, than any other group. While times have squeezed everyone, the additional overhead is a sound investment for them (yes, pun intended).
Speaking of the sound system, after some technical difficulty (power related) killed the sound for about 20 minutes or so, Dailey & Vincent jumped off the stage (OK, actually they walked down the steps at the rear of the stage) and went into the aisle and started playing, jam-session style — a patented move in that situation, but always a crowd pleaser.
The lineup was full of all stars, including Dale Ann Bradley, whose band includes Steve Gulley, and more recently the return of Phil Leadbetter to active touring. Friday’s concert was closed by Russell Moore and IIIrd Tyme Out. Great as always, it was particularly heartwarming for a West Virginian, feeling a little nauseous in a sea of UK blue, to hear their rendition of Country Roads. It was almost surreal when on the final chorus the band stopped singing, and the crowd of Wildcats was singing, enthusiastically, “almost heaven, West Virginia.” Enough to bring a tear to a glass eye.
The only disappointment we had was after roaming the camping areas for nearly an hour around 10:00 p.m., we encountered very little jamming, but this was before the stage show ended, so we may have been too early.
After spending the night at the Holiday Inn Express and waking feeling like our IQs had jumped ten points, we arrived back at the festival grounds on Saturday and the first person we saw as we approached the stage area was our old friend, J.D. Crowe (I mean he has been our friend for about 30 years or so, not that he’s old; honest, J.D.) standing with fiddle legend, Bobby Hicks.
Onstage for their first set was Blue Highway. Valerie and I host a festival in West Virginia and Blue Highway was part of the lineup several years ago, but when they departed, Shawn Lane left behind a garment bag containing several changes of clothes, including a sport jacket I believe. I understand from Tim Stafford that Shawn’s oversight was nothing unusual, and that he has scattered a trail of items all over the country during Blue Highway’s travels.
Since I knew we’d be seeing him, we brought Shawn’s garments with us. As we approached the stage area from the day parking lot with his garment bag slung over my shoulder, we managed to catch his attention and he got quite a chuckle from the sight, which Valerie was able to catch on film (OK, it’s digital, no film anymore). They put a great show, as always, complete with an impression of Tony Rice by Tim Stafford marking Tony’s 62nd birthday.
The Boxcars took the stage next. A band for musicians, connoisseurs, and serious fans of bluegrass, they don’t resort to the theatrical to entertain, they just play and sing at the highest level and leave it to the audience to decide for themselves. The lineup also included Town Mountain and a fixture at Festival of The Bluegrass, the Seldom Scene. A special event for this year, a rare appearance of the Masters of Bluegrass, was a highlight of the weekend.
The Masters of Bluegrass, affectionately called the MOB (this is one MOB I’d be happy to work for or be connected with), consists of J. D. Crowe, Del McCoury, Bobby Osborne, Bobby Hicks, and Jerry McCoury. While the Bluegrass Album Band may not have been the first “super group,” following their success, a number of all-star groups followed, including the original Masters (sometimes also referred to as the Masters of Bluegrass), which featured Kenny Baker, Josh Graves, Eddie Adcock and Jesse McReynolds, but it would be hard to match the historical stature of the current MOB. Age and less frequent performance take their toll on all musicians, but it was nothing short of amazing to see and hear what Bobby Hicks is still capable of doing on the fiddle. To top that off, he was featured as lead vocalist on a country flavored ballad, Take Me As I Am (Or Let Me Go), no doubt surprising many unfamiliar with his vocal talents. While there were a few stumbles here and there, the audience loved and embraced these legends, and after an encore brought them back to the stage, they closed with a blistering rendition of Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms (which clocked in at a surprising 160 beats per minute).
The good news is that if your cable or satellite television programming has KET (Kentucky Educational Television) or your local public broadcasting affiliate carries the KET series Jubilee, you’ll have the opportunity to watch the whole festival. At least some of the festival was broadcast live (our Directv programming carried Saturday’s show live, which I programmed our DVR to record while we were at the festival), but the entire festival was recorded and will be chopped into weekly segments for airing on future Jubilee programs. What I watched since returning home looks very good, no surprise since it was filmed with no less than 6 cameras at any one time — two onstage, one at either end, one on ground directly in front of the stage, one on scaffolding back near the sound mixing board, one on a crane, and one flown overhead by a little helicopter contraption (that’s the technical term, I believe).
A great festival, and a great time, and more memories to treasure. We’ll be back on the road performing in North Carolina and Maryland over the next couple weeks, but I’m sure the house won’t fall in anytime soon, and maybe I can keep the grass and weeds from taking over.
“The MOB is on its way!” is what Don Rigsby of the Rambling Rooks had promised when they left the stage. He was talking to an excited crowd of onlookers at the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) in Bowling Green this past Saturday night, January 26.
That’s right, friends, there’s a new MOB in town, although this particular mob actually carries fiddles in their fiddle cases, and the murderous ways of Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone have been replaced by the high lonesome voices of Bobby Osborne and Del McCoury. This MOB is the Masters of Bluegrass, which also includes J.D. Crowe, Bobby Hicks and Jerry McCoury, and the debut performance of the band made for a night of music and memories not soon forgotten.
This night had been long in coming, many months in fact. Those fortunate enough to be in attendance at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s awards show in September had been given a peek at what was to come when the quintet appeared briefly on stage. Since then, anticipation has been running high for people anxious to see and hear just how these icons, all lauded and at the very top of the bluegrass ladder of success, were going to put together a show.
What a show it was! Other than a rather painful introduction for Bobby Osborne, who was introduced as “Bobby Osmond,” it was everything the waiting crowd had hoped for. Not yet polished and with a few first-show jitters and missteps that the crowd loved – and over which the band laughed at themselves – the men played and sang well, told amusing stories and entertained their audience like the pros that they are. It was clear that the Masters weren’t going to take themselves too seriously, and they didn’t want their fans to, either.
Kicking off with My Blue Ridge Mountain Home, the group settled into their set, comprised of mostly songs from the first generation of bluegrass heroes. They went right into I’m Waiting to Hear You Call Me Darling from Flatt & Scruggs before Osborne took a moment to welcome everyone to the show and say that “we hope you like everything we do.”
It’s wasn’t difficult. The two tenor voices of Osborne and Del McCoury handled both lead and harmony vocals in turn as the song required, creating imaginative harmonies that you don’t often hear because there are rarely two voices in one band that can hit those high notes. If you’re wondering if Crowe might get a little rusty now that he’s officially “retired,” well, he sure doesn’t sound retired!
Although Bobby Hicks has been off the road for nearly a decade after 50 years riding upon it, he hasn’t lost his touch on the fiddle. Whether whittling Orange Blossom Special at breakneck speed or moaning with double-stops and a long bow on Bill Monroe’s Cheyenne, he’s still in the game. Osborne lent sturdy and capable mandolin to the ensemble and stunned the audience of believers with that well-recognized tenor. Jerry McCoury plucked his bass high and strong, thumping out the perfect foundation on which the others could build their music.
In a show like this, with players like this, there are bound to be many special moments, and nobody was disappointed. Hicks is noted for being one of the finest bluegrass fiddle players to ever pick up a bow, and the reasons are still obvious. Beyond the technique of playing the instrument, he can evoke emotion out of both his fiddle and his listeners in almost a transcendent way, sweetly, elegantly, movingly.
Bobby Osborne explained that he was proud of the fact that Flatt & Scruggs had recorded a song that he had written, the very famous Pain in My Heart, and the Masters did justice to their own version. Del McCoury had ‘em squealing in their seats on Don’t Stop the Music when he hit the high note on the refrain, “My pocKETS are empty, I spent my last dime…” in his amazing, Del McCoury way.
Jerry McCoury stepped to the microphone twice, to sing Give Me Your Address From Heaven and Roll On Buddy. Written by the Wilburn Brothers, Del McCoury had actually recorded the original Bill Monroe release of Roll On Buddy with Big Mon in the early ‘60’s. When the Masters sang Monroe’s No One But My Darlin’, it was a look back to when Bobby Hicks spent time as a Blue Grass Boy in the mid-‘50’s, and appeared on the original recording of that song.
Being in Kentucky and all, it was no bombshell that the song that received the most enthusiastic response of the night was Blue Moon of Kentucky. At the end of the tune, after the clapping, cheering and toe-tapping had died down, Osborne said, “If I knew you was gonna like it that much, I would have sung it a bit better than that!”
“December 31, 1954,” announced Hicks, remembering the exact date of the recording session he played with Monroe on the now-iconic instrumental, Cheyenne. Watching and listening to him play with such flair and vitality, it seemed impossible that this could be the same fiddle player that laid down the original track nearly 60 years ago. Although he will be 80 this year, there is no sign of age or wear in his talent.
Certainly, the Osborne Brothers’ Rocky Top was intended to be a highlight of the show, but when it was finished, after a long build-up by Bobby Osborne, the quintet looked at each other with uncertainty. Osborne finally came to the mike.
“This is a first for us and for you,” he chuckled. “We’ve known about this [tour] for a few weeks, but we fiddled around and didn’t do a lot of rehearsing,” he added, as the audience got in on the joke. Crowe chimed in, “We rehearsed for 15 minutes and ate for three hours.” Del McCoury got things back in gear and the band joined in to play I Wonder Where You Are Tonight by Johnny Bond before the set finished with the Osborne Brothers’ Ruby, one of the most inspired performances of the night.
Nobody even bothered to leave the stage for the audience to call for an encore; instead, the Rambling Rooks came back out, and the concert closed with everybody either singing or taking an instrumental break on Nine Pound Hammer. In the end, there were smiles everywhere – on the stage and in the seats. If, as Longfellow said, “music is the universal language of mankind,” then the Masters of Bluegrass pulled off a triumph in Bowling Green, for the message was received – loud and clear.
