Ron Thomason Archives - Bluegrass Today

Ron Thomason of Dry Branch Fire Squad at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Ron Thomason and Dave Berry at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass – photo by Rob Schroeder

I had the honor of sitting down with Ron Thomason for a chat this weekend after the Dry Branch Fire Squad’s Banjo Stage set at the nineteenth annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (HSBG) festival in San Francisco. Ron is both a legendary bluegrass performer and a story-teller, so it didn’t take much to get him started. He talked about farming, baling hay, horses, Warren Hellman, his other festivals, hand jive, Rock and Roll, playing with Ralph Stanley, his mandolin, his band, and more.

I’m here with Ron Thomason of Dry Branch Fire Squad at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass ’19. Hi Ron, Dry Branch hasn’t missed a year of this festival, how did that happen and when did you first meet Warren Hellman?

Not since the second year. I met Warren about then but I didn’t know it was his festival as we were both in the same sport. We both did long-distance riding with horses, and he was kind of famous and hate to say it, I guess I was too in that line of work.

Several lines of work I’d say.

Well, I can really make hay, 4650 bales this year. Heidi Clare like a mountain goat goin’ to the top and tying those babies. Yea, we’ve made a lot of hay.

It sounds like that excites you.

Well, I was raised on a farm, you know, and I just always thought I’d like to be a competent farmer, competent rancher I guess.

You host a couple of other festivals like Grey Fox and Winterhawk, don’t you?

Well, Mary Doub and I, and a third partner who left in 2000, started Winterhawk and when the one feller left, we just changed the name to Grey Fox. It’s all the same festival. I also have a festival in Colorado called High Mountain Hay Fever, which is all for charity. We’ve raised about $700,000 for children’s health care.

That’s wonderful.

I’m really proud of it and I’ve got the best board.

I don’t wanna blow your cover, but where’d you go to college?

Ohio University… it was an experience. I can’t say I learned much there but it made me want to learn stuff after I was there

Let’s talk about hambone, how did you learn that?

I learned it from a young friend of mine named Bobby Lowe and he was really good at it. I’ve told the story many times, and it’s really true. I just wanted to learn how to do it ,and finally he showed me and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. I always thought that the only real music talent I have is a little bit of timing. I’ve always been proud of the fact that I don’t have to count the songs off, and I know how fast they go to start with. You know, hambone is not really a bluegrass thing. I doubt that Bill or Ralph would have done it.

It’s maybe a little more of an old-time thing.

Yeah, right. You’re probably not as old as I am, but back when I was a young redneck there was a Rock and Roll song out called Willie and the Hand Jive, doin that crazy hand jive. It was not rock and roll because it didn’t really have a back beat. It was one of the last kind of rocky songs that that actually had a downbeat. In fact, I would argue that Bill Monroe sort of invented rock and roll music with that backbeat. You know the beat when your foots in the air, Elvis did it and Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Jerry Lee, they all had that backbeat.

Well, you’re not alone in that thought about Monroe’s influence on Rock and Roll. Can you talk about after you played with Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, when you went off and did your own thing?

Yeah, there was a while after I played with Ralph that if somebody called me to play, I’d go but really I didn’t wanna play much after that for a while. I figured first of all, I wouldn’t ever be in a band that good, and man it was a band. I mean that was Curley Ray Cline, George Shuffler, Roy Lee Centers, and Ralph. People like Charlie Sizemore said that was the best Stanley Band ever and I tend to agree with that, but I didn’t want that to become my whole life and it was becoming that.

So what would be your biggest takeaway from working with Ralph, what you learned from him?

That’s a good question. I learned to be a good bus driver and for some reason, we would talk about serious stuff, things that, well the best thing I can tell you that I learned is that neither Ralph nor Curly Ray had any bigotry in them. Ralph was a staunch Democrat and they both admired greatly at that time, the work Martin Luther King was doing, and that’s very rare in bluegrass.

Yes, especially back then.

Yeah. I mean there were times when you could see bumper stickers that said bluegrass is white men’s music, and then you’d see one bluegrass is man’s music. Bluegrass as white man’s music had its own bad connotation, you know. Those two men along with George Shuffler, they didn’t have it in them, and we talked about those things all the time. I was playing with Ralph, I think just about the time the Civil Rights bills passed so I admire those men for that. In bluegrass music and still to this day, there’s stuff that’s just unpalatable, it’s unconscionable.

Someone on the Ken Burns PBS Country Music documentary talked about bluegrass being white man’s soul, and you play some great Sam Cooke and Motown covers that reflect that.

Well, you know Monroe learned from Arnold Shultz, a black man and great blues player. We don’t have any recordings by him but we have music of people that learned their music from him and he, you know, put the blues in bluegrass.

That’s for sure. So back to when you were breaking out on your own, at some point you decided to get together your own band. How did that come about?

Yeah, I didn’t decide that. I just liked to play music and some guy called me up and said he’s got a Thursday night job at this bar in Springfield, Ohio, would you put a band together? So I did and we were playing on Thursday night, and then I think it’s third or fourth week, Ralph came in and hired us to play his festival, and a couple weeks after that Bill came in and hired us to play his festival. Those were two guys who were friends of mine, and I think the next thing that happened was Pete Kuykendall got really interested in us.

By the time we played Ralph’s festival, a fella named Joe Wilson, I don’t know if you know him but he was the head of the National Council for Traditional Arts, and he just loved us, and I didn’t get it. But it was kind of that thing you’re talking about, the all-inclusiveness about what we were doing. So he lined us up to do concerts in Bangladesh and India and Nepal, Sri Lanka and Morocco, and represent the United States. And as dumb as I am, I was smart enough to know I gotta get something ready for this cause this is important stuff.

That’s really great. When you started doing those shows, what was your stage banter like? Was it what we hear today with lot of colorful stories, or did that develop over time?

Good question, both. Well Ralph Stanley made me be an MC. He didn’t like it. He didn’t feel he was being properly presented and I said, well I can probably present you because I believe in you. So I introduced him for six or eight months, always with a different way of doin’ it. He had so much ground to cover and I was able to make it educational and a little bit humorous at the same time, which was my goal and it always has been.

From the time I first started playing I felt like I can’t expect people to like bluegrass music if I’m not willing to tell them how. I feel like I’m from the true vine. I was sixteen before we had electricity in the slums of Virginia, and I feel like I got just as much right to try and tell people who we really are as anyone. I just don’t feel any compunction about doing it and you know, once people understand what the music’s about, they love it.

Plus they hear your interpretation of it which to me is just very soulful and from the heart.

Well, thank you.

I have a question about your mandolin… when did you acquire it?

In 1978, I don’t know where to start on this but I can tell you I still have everything. I have the original case and the original bill of sale, even have the original frets. It had been purchased by a lady who lived in Boston and was playing with the Boston Mandolin Orchestra, and she purchased it in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. The bill of sale shows that she paid five dollars a month and drove to Jaffrey to make the payment for 25 or 30 months, so I think it was like 280 bucks total. They let her sit in front of the orchestra because she had a Gibson artist model mandolin, got a picture of that too.

She played for a couple years and quit, put the mandolin in the proverbial attic. Her grand daughter was taking care of her estate, and a fella in Jaffrey, New Hampshire who owned a music store agreed to be the go-between person who would market it. He brought it up to the Berkshire Mountains festival, and three people wanted it, if I understand correctly. They said Bobby Osborne wanted it and I know Doyle Lawson wanted it and I wanted it. He was asking, I believe it was $8,000 at that time and nobody had that money with them.

So I said, you know, I’ve got this rental property back in Springfield, Ohio and what he was wanting was some income. I said I’d be glad to trade this rental property for it, a four apartment house for the mandolin. So we all went home, but when I went home, I went straight to the bank and got the dollars in case he needed that instead. Well, he called in a couple three weeks and said, you know, it’s too far away and I’d really like to have the income, but I just got to have the money and in the end, he accepted $7,200, I believe and another mandolin that I had at the time. I think I had probably paid about $800 for the other mandolin and he said he sold it for $2,500.

Nice story and good for him.

I learned that part of business especially with Ralph. I had a couple banjos that weren’t worth much but people would pay a lot of money for them, more than they were worth, just cause I played them or Ralph played them or something like that.

You had a pretty busy festival schedule this year. Do you plan to keep that up?

Well, I think this has probably been our least busy year because I’ve had some other things I had to do. I had a couple of injuries that were pretty bad, a triple fracture in my knee that I’ve been rehabbing. I’m 75 years old now and that was my 24th broken bone. I’ve been training horses all my life, you know, and I had a choice to get a different knee or go through quite a painful rehab and I elected to do the rehab because I love to ride and if I had gotten the knee, I’d probably have to give up riding and running. In fact, the doctor still says I ought not to run but I’ve been running for about six or eight months now.

So next year you hope to be busier than this year?

I don’t care one way or the other. You know, I have two festivals that I’m involved in the production of, so I’ll be there, and we’ve been in every Gettysburg Festival since it started. I think we got two or three others that we’ve been to every year since they had us like over thirty or forty years. So that’s pretty good, you know, and we got this and that’s pretty good stuff. So I don’t really want to take any bad jobs, and I love these guys in the band. It’s the best band I’ve ever been in.

Well, you’ve been with them for a while, right?

Yeah, the one interchangeable for a while was Adam Macintosh would be here sometimes. Brian went off and started his own band for a while and called up, I remember a wonderful thing he said, he said Ron, somehow you’ve learned how to make people listen to old fashioned bluegrass music and make them like it, and I like that better than what I’m doing now.

Well you can’t beat that. Thanks so much for your time Mr. Thomason.

Well, thank you Dave, I appreciate it.

Notes

You can see the Dry Branch Fire Squad’s set on the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Webcast Archive.

Photographs courtesy of Rob Schroeder

Additional photographs by Dave Berry, Moses Griffiths, and Mary Ann Goldstein

Trailer released for Bluegrass Court Jester: Ron Thomason

Ol’ Black Bear Productions in Silver Spring, MD, has released a trailer for Bluegrass Court Jester: Ron Thomason—An Unusual History of Bluegrass Music, their film on bluegrass music and history told through a focus on Thomason, the charismatic leader of Dry Branch Fire Squad.

Perry Schwartz is the man behind this project, which got its start a year ago when he filmed a DBFS concert. He also captured an interview with Ron, and another with Chris Tesky, Program Director at Bluegrass Country radio in Washington, DC. Moving forward, Schwartz has interviews planned with additional experts in the history and culture of the music, and will capture further concert footage with younger string musicians Kaia Kater and Ten String Symphony. And in July, he and his crew will encamp at the High Mountain Hay Fever Bluegrass Festival in Westcliff, CO to shoot the acts appearing on stage.

The final film isn’t expected until 2019, one that Perry says will be primarily a concert documentary, with commentary and humorous interludes from Ron throughout. A one hour run time is the director’s goal.

To date, Schwartz has raised all the necessary capital for the film through crowdsourcing appeals on indiegogo. A third phase of funding is currently underway to cover this year’s expenses.

You can get a feel for the project from this trailer.

More details can be found online.

Bluegrass Court Jester gets his due in upcoming film

Anyone attending bluegrass festivals around the US this past 20 years has likely seen an appearance by Dry Branch Fire Squad, and their acerbic front man, Ron Thomason. Though a fine mountain-style singer, mandolinist, and guitar player, Ron’s primary claim to fame is his dry, self-referential humor and close familiarity with the old time storytelling tradition.

Audiences always enjoy the band’s music, but when the pickers step back and Ron launches into one of his bits, all the seats remain filled.

And now Perry T. Schwartz with Ol’ Black Bear Productions is finishing up a one-hour documentary film, Bluegrass Court Jester: Ron Thomason, which seeks (in Perry’s words) “to capture the special magic and unusual history that is bluegrass music.”

Schwartz has chosen Thomason as his vehicle to tell the story, using live concert footage and interviews, plus archival footage. The documentary will explore everything from old time to newgrass, with Ron as our guide.

Most of the footage was shot at the High Mountain Hay Fever Bluegrass Festival in Westcliff, CO which he helps produce and the band hosts. But this weekend Schwartz will be filming when Dry Branch Fire Squad performs at St. Marks Presbyterian church in North Bethesda, MD on April 7 to create a promotional video for this project.

Perry shared a bit about how Bluegrass Court Jester came to be.

“I have been a fan of bluegrass music for the past forty years with my interest and appreciation for the music enhanced by listening to Bluegrass Country radio at WAMU FM in Washington, DC. Now that music still lives on in the DC metro area through the Bluegrass Country Foundation which programs Bluegrass Country radio through the facilities of WAMU and on the internet. Over the years listening to Ray Davis on Bluegrass Country radio, I thought of this video project. I was planning on using the endless wonderful stories Ray Davis had to tell to hear the history of bluegrass music. Sadly Ray passed away before I could start the project with him.

Two years ago I heard an interview with Ron Thomason on the Lee Michael Dempsey radio show and realized that Ron also had stories to tell of his 40 years playing with the Dry Branch Fire Squad. Additionally he was a great story teller and humorist. I contacted him about doing a concert video that would tell us the story of bluegrass through interviews and recorded video concert music.”

He also promises to send a trailer for us to share with our readers once it is completed. If you are in the DC-area on Friday, stop in and catch the show!

Dry Branch Fire Squad to Quicksilver Productions

Quicksilver Productions has announced the signing of the venerable Dry Branch Fire Squad for representation services with the agency. The iconic bluegrass band continues to be anchored by the vocal and storytelling prowess of Ron Thomason, with Brian Aldridge on guitar, Tom Boyd on banjo, and Dan Russell on bass.

They join the substantial stable of Quicksilver artists, including Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, Town Mountain, Finnders & Youngberg, Foghorn Stringband, and Blue Canyon Boys.

Dry Branch is booking now for their 40th Anniversary tour in 2016.

You can get a feel for Ron’s charm on stage in this video Ted Lehmann shot at the Gettysburg festival in 2013.

More details on any Quicksilver Productions artist can be found online.

George Shuffler laid to rest

This report (and photos) from George Shuffler’s funeral service yesterday comes from Becky Johnson, host of The Bluegrass Breakdown Show. It airs Wednesdays from 2:00-4:00 p.m. (ET) at wcomfm.org.

The sun was bright and the skies a dark Carolina blue as I made my way out of the Piedmont of North Carolina along I-40 west, up the mountains to Valdese, an isolated but beautiful part of the state. Settled long ago by Waldeseans….a faithful early Protestant sect that vowed poverty, helping out their neighbors and devotion to family.

The friendliness and outgoing nature of the locals struck me as I wandered through the many thrift stores that stood along Main Street. When I inquired about the local funeral home to an employee ….she knew right away.

“Shuffler, George? Yeah, he’s my cousin,” she answered quietly.”You just head down Main Street a ways……you’ll find it …on the right…..another customer, an elderly lady offered to wait in her car so I could follow her to the place.

I made my way through town and soon found myself amongst a throng of friends and family at the Heritage Funeral Home. So many people were there that was barely enough room to move. Many were familiar faces, such as Mike Ramsey, Dan Hayes, and Ron Thomason. Family members were very pleased with the big turnout.

I made my way to say goodbye to George… I whispered to him our love and farewell. Then the casket was closed and the service began. The coffin took center stage; a huge spray of fresh red roses blanketed his shiny dark chestnut casket. To his left stood one cross shaped flower arrangement and just beyond, near the piano player, was George Shuffler’s guitar proudly on display; bittersweet to see it all alone up there.

James Alan Shelton played an instrumental version of Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? He played other tunes later on in the service.

The sweet music of Darrin and Brooke Aldridge filled the air. Ron Thomason officiated the service. He was very heartfelt, full of stories as only Ron knows how to spin…..stories that had us all roaring with laughter, and then memories that had us wiping away tears. More music played, and it was over.

The pall bearers stood up after the final prayer, silently rolled George Shuffler down the aisle to the waiting hearse.

A very long line of cars perhaps a hundred or more slowly snaked their way back down Main Street, to the graveyard.

The sun was setting low in the blue cloudless skies as we all parked and walked up the ridge making shadows harsh… cold, like the Spector of the Grim Reaper. We all gathered round.

A few words were spoken by the pastor, the most solemn moment of all was suddenly interrupted by 2 large, overly friendly dogs – one all brown, one mix of white and brown – in a joyful display of playfulness and joy. As they weaved through the legs of everyone present, they began rolling and tumbling all over each other, completely oblivious to the humans in mourning. However, I firmly believe that those 2 dogs were, in fact, the spirits of George Shuffler and Carter Stanley who came to visit all of us, and wanted us to be happy. To celebrate our own lives fully in each moment we are given, to run romp and play, to laugh fully and love deeply; to have faith that one day we shall be together again….only George Shuffler would make his own passing feel so full of………..life!

Rest in Peace, my friend. You made the world a better place for all of us.

Bill Lowe passes

William Forrest “Bill” Lowe of West Union, South Carolina, passed away on Sunday, April 28. He was aged 82.

Born at Hatfield, Pike County, Kentucky, on May 8, 1930, he grew up listening to old-time country music.

His uncle Grover taught him how to play clawhammer banjo while he learned to play flat-pick guitar from two friends Russell Farley and, later, Doc Watson. The Carter Family were also great influences on his music.

At the age of 16 Lowe started his first band called the Lonely Mountain Boys, which played hundreds of schoolhouse shows and on radio stations WLSI, WPKE, both in Pikeville, Kentucky, and WBTH, in Williamson, West Virginia.

After serving in the Marine Corps, he lived near Los Angeles, California, where he actively played and wrote both bluegrass and country music songs. While in California he teamed up with Joe Nixon and the Happy Hoedowners with whom he appeared on KXLA TV. Also, he befriended Roland and Clarence White, co-writing songs recorded by the Kentucky Colonels.

In the late 1950s Lowe’s recording of Foolish Heart (released by Sundown Records) made the lower reaches of the country music charts.

During his time in California he worked as a studio musician and opened shows for such greats as George Jones and Merle Haggard, but the highlight of his time there was when Bill Monroe offered him a job, a position that he had to turn down due to him having four children to raise.

In the mid-1970s, Lowe moved to Farmersville, Ohio, and became heavily involved with the thriving bluegrass community that called WYSO in Yellow Springs its home.

Lowe cut a great laid-back album on Ramblin’ Records (a subsidiary of Rounder) in 1976. He also recorded at least two albums on Vandalia’s Rose Records in the late 1970s as Bill Lowe and Cripple Creek, a band that he fronted for 25 years.

In 1987 he put together a joint project with Ron Thomason, released on Gordo Records.

For three years he was a DJ, playing bluegrass and old-time music once a week, at a radio station based at Antioch College, Yellow Springs Ohio.

In 2012 Lowe became the 179^th member of the IBMM’s Bluegrass Music’s Pioneering Generation.

Ron Thomason remembers Lowe fondly ………………

“Bill Lowe was my friend. His music was not only from the true vine; he was one of the roots. His voice was earthy in the way of Doc Watson’s, Clint Howard’s and George Shuffler’s. His guitar approach was unique, but could be described as an amalgamation of Maybelle Carter’s, Riley Puckett’s and Roy Harvey’s.

He and I made a record several decades ago. We picked songs which had the bark left on them. Such songs had a deep emotional effect on Bill, and once he cried while we were singing.

I am honored to have been able to get him to perform at both Grey Fox and High Mountain Hay Fever, not for Bill’s benefit; but for the benefit of the folks at those festivals who would never otherwise have gotten to hear what the True Vine grows.”

Funeral services will be conducted Wednesday; May 1, 2013 at 12:00 p.m. from the Hatfield Funeral Chapel in Toler, Kentucky, with Elder Eddie Hatfield officiating. Burial will follow in the T.S. Lowe Cemetery in Hatfield, Kentucky.