Read no. 27

Greetings!

“Summer’s almost gone and winter’s coming on” but there’s still time to squeeze in an issue of WIB before fall hits! Speaking of fall, I hope to see you at the IBMA Trade Show and Fan Fest October 1-7 in Louisville, Ky.

Amanda Kowalski Receives Sally Ann Forrester Scholarship

Amanda Kowalski, the extraordinary bass player from the Wheeling Park High School Bluegrass Band in Wheeling, W.Va., was the recipient of the first Sally Ann Forrester Scholarship. Thanks to the generosity of individual donors, we raised $2000, which I presented to Amanda at the recent Augusta Heritage Bluegrass Week in Elkins, W.Va. I also gave her a copy of my thesis on Sally Ann. Amanda is a former bass student at Bluegrass Week, and this year served as a staff liaison. Her bass work is featured on Wheeling Park’s recent CD, The Monroe Doctrine: Rosin, Rhythm, and Root 5. She will be attending Belmont University in Nashville this fall, where she plans to study Music Business.

After hearing about the scholarship, a number of Augusta students gave me checks totaling over $600 toward next year’s scholarship! This included a $376 donation from Casey’s and my banjo classes. I was so moved I could hardly speak. Looks like this is a continuing thing! Sally Ann’s son, Bob, said that he couldn’t think of a more fitting way to honor his mother than with an educational scholarship. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed. And thank you, Amanda, for sparking this idea. Thanks also to Nancy Cardwell at the IBMA office for steering Amanda my way. If you would like to make a donation, just send your check (made out to the Sally Ann Forrester Scholarship Fund) to me at POB 2498. Winchester. VA 22604.

IBMA: Those Amazing Kids to Feature Young Women

According to John Laswell, who is in charge of the Workshop Stage at the IBMA Fan Fest, this year’s youth workshop will feature a number of young women in bluegrass. “Those Amazing Kids” is scheduled to feature Michelle Porter, 11, on mandolin and guitar (featured in WIB 24); Maggie Beth Estes, 10, on fiddle; Sierra Hall, 9, on mandolin and guitar; Christina Furtado, 9, on bass; Amanda Kowalski on bass; and Evan Ward (yes, he’s a guy), 13, on banjo. Those Amazing Kids perform Saturday,

October 6, on the Workshop Stage. Come out and support these young women! The future of women in bluegrass looks bright indeed!

First Women Inducted into IBMA Hall of Honor: The Carter Family

On October 4, the Carter Family—Sara, Maybelle, and A.P.—will be inducted into the IBMA Hall of Honor at the IBMA Awards Show in Louisville, Ky. This marks the first time that any women have been inducted into the Hall of Honor since its inception in 1991. Most people in bluegrass are familiar with Maybelle and her influential guitar playing. However, Sara, whose powerful, low voice was the backbone of the Carter Family’s singing, often seems to take a backseat to Maybelle. But according to Nicholas Dawidoff, in his book In The Country Of Country, “Sara was the real star of the show.” He says, “Sara Carter could have been as prominent a national star as [Jimmy] Rodgers, except, of course, she was a woman.” He also quotes historian Charles Wolfe as saying that “he suspects that it was Sara who handled the arranging on a lot of the material A.P. brought home from the road.” Her granddaughter says she was “very stately, very commanding...She wore a lot of slacks.” Mike Seeger describes her as a “rural aristocrat.” Dawidoff says she was an “independent character” who “went big-game hunting and shot bears, she smoked cigarettes, and she took guff from nobody, including her absent-minded husband.” Sara left A.P in 1933, divorcing him six years later, something that simply wasn’t done back in the ’30s in southwest Virginia. Ever the maverick, she continued to make music with A.P. and the Carter Family until 1943.

Sara and Maybelle are both powerful foremothers who, without a doubt, are deserving of this award. Maybe next year Louise Scruggs will make it in. In my humble opinion, she is long overdue!

—Murphy Henry

BLUEGRASS IN JAPAN: WOMEN ARE WELCOME

By Martha Hartmann

I believe I have at last found my home in the world of music. I began piano lessons at the age of six and would have majored in piano performance in college had it not been for the trauma of yearly recitals. Later, when I acquired a husband, two children, and a career as a high school French and Spanish teacher, I became a church organist in Clarkesville, Ga., even though I had never touched an organ before. Then, after hearing a dulcimer player give a demonstration at our high school, I became a devoted dulcimer player. But it was only after leaving my career as a teacher and becoming a lawyer that I

finally found the banjo. I was sitting in the courtroom one day, waiting for my case to be called, when a friend told me that the local trade school was starting a banjo class. I registered immediately. Even with an old beat-up banjo, I loved the sound and the freedom of bluegrass music. When I moved to Southwest Florida, I found a magnificent bluegrass world. Every night of the week there is a good jam to attend. So with the jams and the hours of practice, I am now on my third career, that of a bluegrass banjo player! Perhaps you can already see where this is headed. My son Matthew was enrolled in an intensive Japanese language program at a school in Yokohama, and early in January I started working on my plans to visit him. I also wanted to sightsee, but I really wanted to find out more about the Japanese bluegrass scene. I emailed Saburo “Sab” Watanabe Inoue, the publisher of Moonshiner, the Japanese bluegrass magazine, who immediately invited me to join several groups in the Osaka area. He suggested I contact Chiko Mitsuya in Osaka and Yasuhiro Ohmori in Yokohama. Chiko responded with a cordial invitation to stay with her family for a few days and participate in a monthly event which many of Osaka’s bluegrass groups enjoy. Mr. Ohmori contacted my son with an invitation for us to come to the NonNon club in the Yokohama area. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response my plans had received. Immediately I started becoming nervous because I perceived that the Japanese people I would be meeting would be the elite of Japan’s bluegrass musicians. I was an intermediate player at best.

I had only been in Japan for three days (and my body was still on East Coast time, 14 hours behind) when Matthew suggested we get up at 6:30 in the morning to catch the bullet train to Hiroshima to visit some of his Japanese friends. As we were standing on the train platform, a Japanese man waiting for the same train noticed my banjo case and came over to speak to us. Through my son, he politely asked who we were and whether we were bluegrass musicians. As it turned out, we had run into Satoshi Hara, one of the most prominent banjo pickers in Japan. He told us he was on his way to the old imperial capital of Kyoto with his partner to do a show that afternoon. I was thrilled to meet him and we had a lively conversation through my son about our interests in bluegrass music. When we got on the train our conversation continued, and it wasn’t long before the banjos came out and we began swapping songs. As we played Blue Ridge Cabin Home, I was struck by the contradiction between the sounds of bluegrass—which were so familiar—and the setting—the passenger compartment of the bullet train to Hiroshima hurtling west at 200 miles an hour—which was so unfamiliar. How surprising it was that I could run into someone from another culture and feel that he understood something important about me because we both played banjo and loved bluegrass. I was to have that feeling many times on my trip.

Later in the week, I spent two days with the Mitsuya family in Osaka. The Mitsuya family can only be described as consummate bluegrass musicians. Both Chiko and her husband Masa have been playing banjo and guitar for more than twenty years. They met at the bluegrass club at the university they both attended. They have two children, an 18-year-old son, Tucky, short for Kentucky, who plays phenomenal guitar, and a 13-year-old daughter, Reno, who is a child prodigy on the fiddle. She started playing when she was three years old. Chiko told me that she and her husband decided to start a family band in the interest of family unity and because all of them were splendid bluegrass musicians anyway. Now the Mitsuya Family Band plays for many events and festivals throughout Japan, and they have produced a CD called Y’all Come Back An' See Us, Y’Hear!

Chiko Mitsuya greeted me at the train station with a kind smile and a reassuring, “Don’t worry, be happy.” She took me to her home where I saw the family’s instruments and hundreds of bluegrass CDs, cassettes, and video tapes. One of the things Chiko had arranged that I liked best was playing my banjo in an informal jam session with Chiko on banjo and her friend Hisae Nishigauchi on guitar. Both ladies also sang. Chiko had invited Hisae to visit because Chiko thought that I would enjoy meeting another woman bluegrass musician. In addition, I saw a lengthy videotape of a festival which had occurred in Japan several months ago. The tape included the performances of more than 200 bands from all over Japan. I observed numerous family bands with lots of women and children playing significant parts. There were few all-women bands, but the trend, according to Hisae, is for bands to include both men and women.

While shopping for dinner one evening, Chiko told me that the main concern of women who play bluegrass music in Japan was that everyone should be willing and happy to play in the keys in which women prefer to sing. At the informal jam session mentioned above, we did all of the music in the keys of either B or A. Later that evening, a family friend came to visit and to prepare for the evening’s performances. He wanted to play my Stelling while Hisae continued to play and sing with him. He seemed perfectly willing to use the keys which Hisae chose.

While visiting Chiko, I attended an evening performance of several bluegrass bands at a nearby nightclub called Another Dream. There were at least five bands from the surrounding area, and the performances were magnificent. The Mitsuya Family Band was on first since Reno had to go home early. Chiko introduced her family band and sang several songs. There was one band, Daisy Hill, in which the guitarist and main singer, Yoko Hisanaga, was a woman. With her was a female banjo player, Naoko Yamasaki, and a male mandolin player, Masafumi Hisanaga, Yoko’s husband. There were other women participating in this evening’s music in important roles. But the most

important contribution made to the whole event was made by a woman, Mrs. Hayashi, the owner of the nightclub. Recently her husband, an admirer of bluegrass music, had died. In an effort to promote the music which she and her husband had loved, she decided to make the facilities of the nightclub available to any bluegrass groups in the area who wanted to come and play once a month on Wednesday nights. As a result, groups have the chance to play and watch other bands play in a comfortable place with an unbelievable sound system, free of charge. If this woman’s kindness and interest in our music are typical, no wonder bluegrass music has become popular in Japan. After the terrific time I had in Osaka with the Mitsuya clan, my son and I attended a Yokohama nightclub, the NonNon, which featured bluegrass music. When we arrived, I heard Blue Ridge Cabin Home from the outside of the club. It was being played at about my speed, and I knew we were in for a good time because this club was presenting the music in an informal setting. When we walked in with my son carrying my banjo, everyone thought he was the banjo player, but as soon as the banjo player was identified, a cordial welcome was issued for me to join the group. After playing for a while, I noticed that other people had arrived with instruments. The club was rather small, so I put my banjo away for a while so that others could play. The newly-arrived musicians played quite a few songs, and then they invited both Matthew and me to join them. This experience was new for Matthew, but the singers had copies of the words, so Matthew felt comfortable enough to join in. (The Japanese use English when they sing, and at the Osaka event I had asked Sab why they didn’t translate the lyrics into Japanese. He said that they felt that the songs lost a lot of flavor in the translation.) We continued through many familiar songs. Toward the end of the evening, a young woman, Junko Ogawa, walked into the club carrying a mandolin. Junko is a young mother of two children and had not been able to come until she put the children to bed. She joined the group and played a terrific mandolin. About that time, someone suggested that I sing, so I borrowed a guitar and sang the only song I can sing, In The Pines. Junko sang, too. For this evening, Junko and I were the only female musicians. Nevertheless, I never felt that she and I were only tolerated. We were begged over and over to sing and play more. Two fine musicians, the Horikoshi brothers, Megumi and Yukata, on mandolin and guitar, accompanied us for all of the songs we did. Upon leaving the NonNon, we thanked the owner of the club, Mr. Masaru Nakajima, and he told us that Mr. Hiroaki Asaka would feature our visit and appearance on the NonNon’s web page.

To put the role of women in Japanese bluegrass music in perspective, I believe it is important to note that there are not many women in positions of importance in the working world of Japan. My son’s girlfriend, Rumiko Nishiyama, has an important job

with the water department in Yokohama. She is only one of three women in her office of 20 employees. The newly-elected Prime Minister’s cabinet made international news when five women, representing one third of the cabinet, were appointed. By contrast, my observations reveal to me that women such as Chiko Mitsuya, Hisae Nishigauchi, Junko Ogawa, and others are welcome in Japan’s bluegrass scene and enjoy wholehearted respect.

Playing bluegrass in Japan was an unforgettable experience for me. Here I was, not understanding one word of spoken Japanese, singing and playing the music I love best in the world with people who shared my enthusiasm. It really did not matter that we could not communicate in a conversation because the music erased all of the barriers.

Monroe’s Daughters & Friends: A Movement in the Japanese

Bluegrass Scene of the New Century

By Hisae Nishigauchi

In Japan, there is a small group of the bluegrassers who call themselves or their musical partners “Monroe’s Daughters.” I sometimes wonder how Bill Monroe would have felt when he heard about his daughters in Japan. At least, we chose this name and are proud of it. The expression “Monroe’s Daughters” refers to female bluegrassers, although conventionally people just say “female bluegrasser” when referring to the women in bluegrass in general. Monroe’s Daughters & Friends are trying to give new opportunities to everybody so that they will be able to meet various people and enjoy bluegrass music with them. However, we are neither a band nor an organization of any kind. We are amateur players, men and women, who have the same idea or feeling toward this music. Let me tell you what is happening in the Japanese bluegrass scene these days.

Bluegrass In Japan And Female Players

Bluegrass music came into Japan in the 1960s. That was the era of the “folk boom.” Major universities and colleges had bluegrass circles or clubs which functioned as the gateway to bluegrass music for young people. They learned this music, formed bands, and performed at nightclubs and festivals. Since then, university circles and clubs have been making a great contribution to promote bluegrass music in this country, and five universities still have bluegrass clubs which are very active.

From the beginning of its history, female bluegrass players existed on the scene. This also seems to be a contribution made by the university bluegrass clubs. It is reported that there was an all-girl band called Kentucky Honeys in Kobe at the end of the 1960s.

In the early 1980s, the number of the women increased not only in the university clubs but also outside those clubs and there were many all-women bands. Furthermore, the “Bluegrass Circles Of Women” was born and a lot of young women participated in its activities. They organized concerts of their own and published newsletters. Needless to say, we have been strongly influenced by Alison Krauss and other female professionals in the United States since the 1990s.

Now, about half of the members of university clubs are women. In general, however, there are few all-women bands. The trend is towards mixed groups of men and women, in which women often play the leading role. This trend is the same in the Japanese bluegrass scene in general. There are excellent female bandleaders and outstanding female musicians. Nowadays, you can see many women bluegrassers performing with their own bands at festivals and nightclubs.

As described above, women have been well accepted in bluegrass in Japan. In fact, the percent of women in the bluegrass population is at most 20 percent. However, a lot of women disappear from the scene for many reasons such as work, marriage, and child care. For the ones who are active as players, there is little opportunity to get to know each other or to meet new people.

Monroe’s Daughters & Friends

I have written several articles and translations about bluegrass music and some of them have been published by the Japanese bluegrass magazine Moonshiner. In the beginning of 2000, I made my own webpage for those articles. Also, I provided a page for Monroe’s Daughters, which has information that specializes in women musicians in the United States and Japan. However, it seems to be interesting to both men and women. For this reason, I asked Murphy Henry for her cooperation, and I began to translate articles from her Women in Bluegrass newsletter into Japanese. In spring of that year, through my webpage, I introduced “Those Girl’s Keys” from WIB 10 to the Japanese readers. After a while, on this topic, people started talking on the internet about their own thoughts and experiences. My webpage was originally intended for women players, but it was encouraging to me and to other female players that a lot of men showed deep interest. That internet discussion continued about a month and the participants came to know that men and women have the same enthusiasm for this music. Finally, we started playing together at informal jam sessions, or sometimes performing on stage as a jam session unit at bluegrass festivals. This is Monroe’s Daughters & Friends. “Friends” refers to the male players.

The core members of this project are Yoko Hisanaga of Daisy Hill, guitar and vocals; Chiko Mitsuya of the Mitsuya Clan, banjo and vocals; Yoshimi Isoyama of Petti Mon, guitar and vocals; and Hisae Nishigauchi (the author) of Nowhere Bound, guitar and vocals. Their husbands are bluegrassers, too. Yoko, Yoshimi, and Chiko have been playing this music for more than 20 years, and their children are familiar with the music, too. In addition, Yoko and Chiko used to be leaders of the Women’s Circles of Bluegrass in the 1980s. Before Monroe’s Daughters & Friends started, we didn’t know each other very well and had never jammed together. However, once this project started, many men and women—from beginners to the veterans—joined our jam sessions at the festivals. It is really fun meeting various people through the music. Many friendships have grown among the participants and several bands have newly formed.

We love traditional bluegrass like Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, Stanley Brothers, Vern Williams, and so on. The traditional repertoire is good for jamming. The girl’s keys are not a problem because we think the singer should sing in his or her best key. Since many female singers come to our jam sessions, we also pick up the songs for women and songs written by the women like West Virginia, My Home written by Hazel Dickens. In addition, we try new songs which really fit Monroe’s Daughters & Friends. Last summer, as soon as Mark Newton’s latest album Follow Me Back To The Fold was released, we chose the title song as our theme and performed it on stage. This is a very good song for men and women to perform together and the concept and arrangement of this song are appropriate for us. We hope more people will become familiar with these songs and will enjoy such a richness of the repertoire.

The most significant thing for us is that men and women respect and welcome each other as musical partners. We believe such a mutual relationship can be established by playing this music in various situations. Bluegrass music is a universal musical form, which is so powerful it can erase various barriers. We strongly feel this when we are playing the music. Interestingly enough, many of the Daughters say that they are becoming less aware of their gender in the bluegrass context. Rather, they are no longer shy because they are women. They are really knee-deep in bluegrass, and have started expressing themselves through this music.

Monroe’s Daughters & Friends have been really successful so far, and we will keep going throughout this season. Our jam sessions are open to everybody. We are looking forward to meeting more people and jamming together.

Will Bluegrass Survive Another Fifty Years?

A Rant by Hilary Sloan

I recently sat in on fiddle with an amazing band—the Swing Kings. I was hanging on for dear life. I was trying to summon the spirit of Stephane Grappelli to come in and save me. A couple of times I got really lost and bombed my solos, but I just laughed and shrugged my shoulders and continued to have a good time and play hard. I could laugh because I was fortunate enough to be among friendly musicians who were there to have fun—veterans who still love music and musicians. I was also fortunate to be on stage with a steel player I have admired for a long time, Herb Remington, who lives here in Houston and builds steels and still plays his ass off at 75. (I never knew a steel could sound so much like a cow or a rhythm piano.)

I tried to picture myself as someone who has been playing music over sixty years and what that would feel like. I tried to imagine what I would be sick of and what would still excite or move me. I tried to imagine what it would be like to haul in two large cases and an amp, through an inhospitable back door and down steps, after doing that for over half a century. Setting up, tearing down, to play in front of an audience again and again. I thought about the future of music. Where it will go? Where it will be if I make it to seventy? What will I be playing? Will I still get angry at being patronized and having men trying to carry my amp for me? Or will I have that calm “so it is and so it goes” demeanor that comes from living on this earth for so long you come to accept everything as a part of it all?

Closest to my heart, where will country and bluegrass be in fifty years? Who will carry it on and revitalize it generation after generation? Who will continue to buck the system and rebel against the mainstream, against the establishment, and breathe new life into the tradition? Maybe you can tell me who is doing that today in bluegrass. Maybe you can tell me who is breathing new SOUL into the art form of Appalachian and Southern acoustic music, because, frankly, I've stopped listening to it in disgust. I've stopped going to the bluegrass section of the music stores, because I do not like the sterile way it is usually recorded. And I’ve stopped going to bluegrass festivals, because I may only hear one band that is playing heartfelt genuine music, and the rest make me angry. I’ve stopped trying to get booked with bluegrass bands, because I feel in my heart that the music is stale, and the festival circuit is one big discriminatory boys club. For about three years now, I’d rather stay at home with my collection and hear it the way I want to, let it touch me and inspire me.

All I wanted to do was be a fiddlist extraordinaire when I started playing a lot of festivals in ’93. I was young, but I’d been playing my instrument for a long time. I thought I had promise. I thought that down deep, most musicians could recognize potential and would want to develop it, even if it was in female form. I thought that making soulful, well-played music was mostly everyone’s goal. I thought that anyone who plays bluegrass, a music that tends to be so derided and disrespected by outsiders, would want to play it with dignity and respect for its glorious traditions and culture. Okay, I was really, really naive. I’d played a lot of little country music shows and retirement homes and even a few rodeos here in Texas. The festivals I remembered from childhood were these big Kentucky festivals at the height of the bluegrass revival of the ’70s. Looking back, after about three years of bluegrass abstinence, I realize now that I had huge overblown expectations of this business of music. But are these unreasonable expectations? Shouldn’t the minimum we expect of ourselves be respect for the culture and respect for the music we’re playing? Shouldn’t young players take it upon themselves to learn the history and blend their own generation’s influences into a continuing, exciting art form? Shouldn’t veteran musicians take young players under their wings and show them the way to a musical future?

What is going on? Where is the next young Hazel Dickens? Will this mythical young soulful goddess be able to navigate the bluegrass charts? Will she fit in with the shiny packaging and excessive overdubs and the same studio musicians who make

everyone’s CDs sound the same? Would she be allowed to develop a sound of her own, or would the studio just come in and overproduce her and alter her voice until the pitch is inhumanly perfect? Would she be allowed to have a career long enough to develop her songwriting skills and progress as an artist? Would she be able to get up there and sing and play, without having to put on a big show that would ensure a return booking? Would the strength of her musical power be enough to sell product? Would it be worth it to hire her, instead of so many unprofessional groups that undercut the prices? I want to have some kind of confidence in somebody that REAL music is going to be played somewhere. Do you have a memory of sitting there in front of a stereo blasting out a piece of vinyl that filled the room with a certain invisible emotional substance? Didn’t you just sit there and let it fill you from your ears to your toes and back through your heart until it stuck in your throat? Was it one of those that made you stay on the edge of your seat until the side was over? Or did you stand there with a friend or relative in disbelief and make them play it again? Be honest. How many times in the past ten years has a bluegrass recording done that to you? What about a live bluegrass performance? Now compare it to the previous decade, and back and back. Am I the only one that sees a pattern?

Little Girl of Mine in Tennessee is something you should record if you happen to have one in that general area. Or if you live in the country and regret the disappearance of that way of life. But mainly, if you can FEEL it in your SOUL. If you’re stuck in a dirty city and you’re doing too many drugs to cope, you should record or write something like Rowan’s Lonesome L.A. Cowboy. If all your friends are on the internet, and you go home to concrete and steel every night, and you spend way too much time on the road commuting, you should write about that. If you had someone love you once and they’re gone forever and now you’re horribly lonely and no one since has loved you, write about that. If you miss your mom’s fried chicken, write about that, but don’t bother me with music that doesn’t reflect the shape of your soul. Don’t record some tired cover that you don’t mean, because you have this really cool arrangement or cool solo. It isn’t going to make this music survive another fifty years, I can guarantee it.

And I don’t think surviving would be some group throwing in a banjo to make their sound more “Americana.” But that is the direction we’re going and we need a sharp turnaround. The old masters are growing older and moving on to the next spiritual plane, and the ones that learned from them are going to do that as well. And imagine festivals without them as it stands today, and would you want to go? If you would, then you probably would view this as the rant of a bitter, old fart (or young fart, as the case may be), and you should probably stop reading right here.

Because I want revolution. And I think that women are just the kind of outsider discontents to do it. If corporate pop culture is inevitably going to absorb and choke out every kind of folk music out there (and it might), do you want to go down quietly, or do you want to go out with a shout, spewing out your handmade wares as you go? If you have been thinking of making music about really personal things in your life, why not start on it today? If you want to write songs, why not give it a go? If you think that no one will listen to you, if you think that you can’t fund a project on your own, think again. Have you heard of credit cards? Have you heard of sisters helping sisters? It’s corny, but where there’s the will, there is a way. Why can’t we change things CD by CD, or record by record? Can’t we find our soul again—just update it and transform it? If you’re a bluegrass musician, you are already free from the burdens of respectability and financial excess. If you have been a female musician for any length of time, you probably haven’t made any premature plans to expand your trophy case. What do you have to lose—or more importantly—what do we ALL have to gain? Isn’t the next fifty years of music in our hands? Don’t you think it would be exciting to see what we can do with it?

Hilary Sloan is a 27-year-old woman, 22-year-old fiddlist, and 6-year guitarist/bassist with classical, bluegrass, and country training. She lives in Houston, Texas, where she spends most of her time in her one-room bedroom apartment scribbling down lyrics and homespun philosophy in notebooks and the rest of her time trying to put a toe into the music business as a singer songwriter. She welcomes all interruptions to her routine at lingenhilster@hotmail.com.

Bluegrass At The Beach

By Joanna Sanders Loehr

My nephew, Aaron, spent a week at a flute workshop in Russia this summer. He came back saying, “I’m not sure my flute playing has improved, but I sure have a greater appreciation of music!” That is exactly the way I feel about my recent experience at Oregon’s Bluegrass At The Beach—that a window has been opened into the intricacies of this particular music and the musicianship that it requires, which enhances my understanding and appreciation of all music. The single most edifying experience was a one-hour class with Stacey Phillips on music theory, where he managed to cover the development of western music from Baroque to Beethoven (and even eastern music) as related to scale structure and the specifics of the scales and chords we use in bluegrass. Whew! As my friend Tom Bryson says, “When you are ready to hear something, you will hear it.”

Next I would have to say that I was swept away by spending so much time in the presence of the incomparable Laurie Lewis—a repertoire workshop every day and a separate workshop on vocal harmony. Just to listen to her voice, which sounds like wild fiddle playing, and to watch her musicianship in action—how she throws her heart and soul into every song she sings and encourages us to do the same (even if you’re only playing back-up) and to hear her sing each of the individual harmony parts (including low bass) with such a flawless ear that she can get novices to participate in hair-raising harmonies. It was also interesting to watch her helping lead vocalists choose keys, encouraging them to use the highest key they could in order to put a bluegrass edge on the music.

I asked Laurie about my favorite book Come and Go Molly Snow and she verified that she had given Mary Ann Taylor-Hall advice about the fiddling descriptions in the book. Laurie then told me that Mary Ann had written the liner notes for her 1998 album Seeing Things. I immediately ran out to get a copy, and here is how Mary Ann described the album in her own visionary way: “The album showcases Laurie’s voice. But through the amazing instrumental work and then the vocal harmonies that seem to accrue around

her like angels, this album, in the end seems to be saying, ‘There’s not this voice and that voice, only singing; there’s not this song and that song, only music.’” The mandolin workshops with Tom Rozum were filled with information and ideas, but were also blissful. For me, the greatest message was the importance of relaxing your whole body and mind (as well as your right hand) and how this even seems like a useful metaphor for life. I loved sitting in on each person’s individual half-hour lesson and learned so much from the different questions they asked (developing a lead-in; developing a break; playing blues; setting up a typical practice session). In my session, Tom worked with me on getting a cleaner sound on chords by not fretting so hard and actually showed me a way of using mandolin practice as a meditation. Namaste. I often think of Jim Watson (of Double Helix fame) saying, “We were successful because we never made the mistake of confusing hard working with hard thinking.” For me, the hard thinking in music is learning to play by ear and to make the music my own. I am not sure how much innate ability I have in either of these areas, but I owe it to myself to give it a try.

Tom gave us an article to read on the art of mastery (as applied to sport and life and also music). We need to understand and believe that the learning process is ongoing, even during periods when you appear to be on a plateau. This reminded me of a favorite metaphor in sailing circles called John Vigor’s Black Box. He said that all the time and thought you spend improving and repairing your boat gets put into a black box and the fullness of the black box determines how well you will respond in times of emergency.

Our mandolin class was graced by four incredible mandolinists. Our two teachers, Tom Rozum and Jeff Smith, continually widened our perspective of what you can do with a mandolin and made me realize that virtuoso breaks are, in fact, original musical compositions. Dave Grisman came and showed us such basic (but useful and reassuring) things as how he changes eight strings in ten minutes (because he uses a new set for every performance). Dave said he only changes one string at a time so as to minimize the shock to the mandolin from the release of pressure. This reminded me of another one of my favorite sayings that when you are truly interested in something, that subject comes alive for you, as when Nobel Laureate, Barbara McClintock said, “When I look at a cell in the microscope, I really get inside and walk around in it.” Then we had eleven-year-old Jake Jolliff in the class who picked up any complicated riff or chord instantly and had the grace to let us learn from him. Tom Rozum told me to memorize a picture of Jake’s soft, relaxed child’s hands floating over the strings. As I later watched Dave Grisman playing, I realized that his hands looked the same way. It made me think of Paul Klee’s desire to access the freedom of childhood in his paintings.

The logo of the Station Inn in Nashville is a Bluegrass Police badge with the inscription “To Preserve and Protect the Music of Bill Monroe.” I came away feeling that the overarching theme of Bluegrass at the Beach was to gain an intimate understanding of the foundations of bluegrass music. The tone is set by the songs chosen for the songbook and CD—original versions from the Osborne Brothers, Jim and Jesse, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and the Stanley Brothers. When any of those tunes came up in class discussion, Tom would say, “Let’s put on the CD and hear how they played it,” then he would demonstrate it for us at a slower pace. He and Jake highly recommended the use of a Back Tracker machine for slowing down parts of recordings, while still maintaining the pitch. In the vocal harmony workshop, the teachers used the harmony patterns on the original songs to demonstrate how they were put together. Then in the stage performances, each group had to learn to play one of these songs as an exercise in understanding the work of the greats. Being grounded in the tradition makes it possible to jam with any other bluegrass musician on the planet. It also provides an excellent background for taking off in your own direction. As Dave Grisman told us, initially his goal was to play it exactly like Monroe, but then his own voice started creeping in. He said the most valuable lesson he learned from Bill Monroe was to be true to yourself.

IBMA Award Nominations: The Women

Okay, folks, it’s time for my annual look at the IBMA Awards nominations to see how the women are faring. This year, I remembered to keep a copy of my second ballot to see who ended up on the long list. (To be included on the second ballot a person or project has to receive at least 10 votes.) Bands were included if they had a woman playing in them; a song or album was included if it had even one woman playing or singing on it. The numbers below reflect the number of women nominated out of the total number of nominees.

SECOND BALLOT

Entertainer: 6 of 22

Vocal Group: 7 of 26

Instrumental Group: 6 of 27

Song: 6 of 23

Songwriters: 6 of 23 written/co-written by women

Album: 12 of 28

Gospel Recorded Performance: 4 of 12

Instrumental Album: 4 of 15

Emerging Artist: 13 of 38

Recorded Event: 6 of 11

Banjo: 3 of 29—Alison Brown, Casey Henry, Kristin Scott Benson

Dobro: 1 of 12—Sally Van Meter

Bass: 1 of 24—Missy Raines

Fiddle: 3 of 22—Alison Krauss, Laurie Lewis, Sara Watkins

Mandolin: 1 of 26—Rhonda Vincent

Guitar: 0 of 24

FINAL BALLOT

Entertainer: Nickel Creek; Rhonda Vincent & The Rage

Vocal Group: Rhonda Vincent & The Rage

Instrumental Group: Nickel Creek

Song: Lonesome Wind Blues by Rhonda Vincent

Songwriters: TomT. Hall and Dixie Hall for Empty Old Mailbox; Jimmie Davis, Charles Mitchell, and Bonnie Dodd for I Dreamed Of An Old Love Affair

Album: O, Brother, Where Art Thou?', Big Mon: The Songs Of Bill Monroe

Gospel Recorded Performance: Stand Still, The Isaacs; I’ll Fly Away, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch

Instrumental Album: Fair Weather by Alison Brown

Emerging Artist: Jim Hurst & Missy Raines

Recorded Event: Follow Me Back To The Fold; Music From Rancho de Ville; Big Mon: The Songs of Bill Monroe

Banjo: Alison Brown

Bass: Missy Raines

Dobro, Fiddle, Guitar, Mandolin: NO WOMEN

You can see that on the second ballot, women are included as roughly one-third to one-fourth of the nominees in most categories, except in the instrumental categories. The percentages are a little higher for Recorded Event and Album. And, frankly, on some days I feel good about our showing, and on some days I am in despair because more women are not nominated. But you can see that things got whittled down to pretty slim pickens on the final ballot. Still and yet, women managed to make the final cut in most categories, again except the instrumental categories. In those we had just two final nominees, the stalwart Missy Raines (three-time Bass Player of the Year) and Alison Brown (Banjo Player of the Year in 1991). Nevertheless, I take heart when I see the numbers of young women who are starting to play lead instruments early, like Those Amazing Kids who will perform on the Workshop Stage at Fan Fest.

Now it’s time for me to make my yearly pitch for you to join the IBMA as professional members—then you can vote for these awards. They do make a difference. They give

visibility to the players and can even mean an increase in bookings. It is crucial that women be included in these awards. Call 1-888-GET-IBMA or check out their website at www.ibma.org.

The Sound Of Women's Voices

By Katie Laur

I have always liked the sound of women’s voices, harmonizing. They can sound vulnerable or fierce. When I was little I sang with my sister, Jackie, and three cousins, Lennon Sisters style, at first in churches, in starched matching dresses with cummerbunds (they always had to let mine out) and bright shiny faces and patent leather shoes that had been shined with Crisco the night before. Daddy used to get impatient in those early days of our migration to Detroit when our Christmas obligations kept him in churches most of the holiday. Then we began getting booked at Cobo Arena and met Minnie Pearl at one show we played there. At the Michigan State Fair we sang and saw Hank Williams, Jr., just a little kid, barely big enough to play guitar, while his mother, Audrey, sat in state, dressed in dark purple and a heavy veil. Later, Daddy pulled up stakes again, moving us to Huntsville, Ala., without our beloved cousins. On weekends, Daddy would drag in some guitar player and ply him with liquor, and Jackie and I would get to stay up till three in the morning, singing. I learned most of the Hank Williams oeuvre that way. Of course Jackie and I continued to sing duets in church. After church, we’d each take a door and wait for compliments. If we got tears, we counted it as double. Secular or religious, it was singing to us; it was a way of connecting.

After guitar player Terri Boswell’s untimely death here in Cincinnati a couple of years ago, I was devastated. I had continued to perform with Jeff Roberts and Buddy Griffin (he’s less available now that he’s with Jim and Jesse), but I did not expect to have the pleasure of singing with women again. Terri’s death touched many people though, and Ma Crow (aka Elaine), who had always had her own band called the Flock, took a look at her own musical life, dumped the sound man, and returned to bluegrass. Which is how the five of us (Ma Crow, Trina Emig on banjo, Linda Scutt on fiddle, and bassist Brenda Wolfersberger) ended up in the Palace of Joy one night, singing with the Cincinnati women’s choir, MUSE.

It was a total surprise to me to get asked to do a program of my own music for MUSE. I had been familiar with the organization, but they are a political group as well as fine singers (55 voices) and had never done anything Appalachian. They chose to have my Ohio River Blues and When Earl Taylor Played the Mandolin arranged for choir, and the

bluegrass women were scheduled to perform a couple of my songs as well. I had begged for Ma Crow at the last minute, and I’m glad I did. She performed that gorgeous piece that Hazel Dickens wrote, Singing Our Song (“we’d sit shaking hands, and singin’ our songs”) which was just beautiful and made everybody cry. By my sister’s and my rule of thumb, Ma walked away with the whole night. We did a song I wrote with John Hartford a long time ago called Dance Till Your Feet Get Warm and one I wrote with Ed Cunningham for the literacy network called Mountain Laurel.

This was without a doubt one of the best bands I’ve played with, and although I still like playing with Jeff and the boys, Brenda and Ma’s harmonizing was beautiful, and Trina’s and Linda’s solo work was great. I have come up with a new term for testosterone bluegrass: “head-banger bluegrass,” where they play so fast and hard the song’s over with before you ever get a feel for it. There’s something about the sound of women’s voices that is so sweet—not cloying but comforting, serene. Brenda has a high-baritone range and perfect sense of pitch, Ma is a good lead, and I am at my age a wonderful alto. There’s a feeling of validation and a blessing I get from being with women. Trina Emig, who was so close to Terri Boswell, was playing with a new bite and attack (and really nailing her tenor harmonies). Linda Scutt, the fiddler, (we’d never met before the rehearsal) knew exactly what to do. She told us she usually plays around Springfield and Yellow Springs with Greg Dearth and Peach Hampton. Brenda’s solid bass playing and lovely high harmonies held everything together. Brenda told me during some downtime in one rehearsal, that she’d been playing bass since she was so little she had to stand on a box to reach the fingerboard. She and her husband, Brandt Smith play in a band together these days, and take their little boy along with them when they go. We laughed about the Christmas gig she and Brandt did with Jeff Roberts and me, when she was extremely pregnant. Brandt and Brenda were doing a lively rendition of Are You Tired of Me My Dartin’, when the baby began to kick and move, and the whole night shimmered with little blessings.

Many years ago, the Katie Laur Band played a couple of weeks in Denver for the United Mine Workers’ Convention, and while I was there, my grandmother died. I didn’t have the money to go home for the funeral and was under contract anyway, so Jean Ritchie, Lily May Ledford, Billy Ed Wheeler, and a couple of the Red Clay Ramblers met in a room to play old songs and help me memorialize my grandmother. Jean taught me a Quaker hymn that night, one she said had been appropriated by the Primitive Baptists. I’ll never forget her high voice singing “Sisters now our meeting is over / And surely we must part / If I never anymore see you /I will love you in my heart…” Lily May with her sweet, plain face, sat in a wheelchair and played a little old-time banjo and sang as well.

These older women had great moral authority for me, and their approval and affection was like a benediction.

My long-time dream of a national conference of women traditional musicians took its first baby step this year at the Appalachian Festival, when the Reel World String Band, Hazel Dickens, and Katie Laur and Her All-Girl Bluegrass Band (I didn’t make that up—that’s the way they billed us) appeared on a Saturday afternoon. It was good to see everybody, but there were so many more women I wish had been there. The Reel World musicians had gotten older and we all pointed and laughed at each other backstage, some of them putting their instruments away, some of us tuning ours in preparation, but it was a warm laughter, the kind that admits to the aging of the body, the easing of competition, and best of all, the softening of the heart. Isn’t it odd that a man’s voice is cherished for its high lonesome sound; women have always sounded like that. Our art is shaped by events we can’t control; it feels good to me to be play music with other women. But that doesn’t mean I’m not available for jobs with guys, too!

Katie Laur was among the first women to lead her own bluegrass band, the Katie Laur Band, way back in the '70s. You can check out more of Katie’s great writing (not necessarily about bluegrass!) at www.citybeat.com.

FRAN LARKIN: TO THAT MANSION IN THE SKY

If you asked Fran Larkin why she played the banjo, she would look you straight in the eye and lie. Most times she was frank, straightforward, but not then. It surprised me but I learned not to contradict the story about her remembering the banjo playing of a great uncle (which was also true!).

Back in 1989, Fran had a lumpectomy to remove breast cancer. Following radiation and chemotherapy she decided to do something she wanted to do and do it while she was young. She wanted to learn to play the banjo. When she mentioned it at the hospital where she was a nurse, someone told her she would have to talk to John in accounting. He asked her what kind of banjo she wanted to play. She had no idea.

“Bluegrass,” John insisted. And Fran’s bluegrass odyssey had begun.

Gary Filgate at Fiddler’s Choice in New Hampshire sold Fran her first banjo, a student model. She didn’t know then that she would be talking banjo with Gary many times in the coming years. It happened that way. She grew into the New England bluegrass family. There were the banjo players, Dave Dick, Mike Kropp, Dana King. The other performers, Sharon Horovitch, Taylor Armerding, Jay and Laurie Keefe. There were the other fans, Ray and Alice, Chuck and Joyce. Just a few of them all.

I don’t recall the first time we saw banjo player Dave Dick. It wasn’t the last. Fran went on to do a cover interview for Banjo Newsletter. He later became her instructor, an honor she sometimes thought she did not deserve. She’d leave work at about two in the afternoon to drive ninety miles to her lesson and seventy-five miles to return home. She’d call from the road and I’d get the spaghetti boiling. She made tapes of all her lessons.

Another lesson came during a vacation to Virginia. She hoped it would be a week of bluegrass, after all, we were close to Kentucky. We circled the state, hitting some of the historical sights for me. One goal was to be in Winchester to see Murphy Henry play at the barbershop. I wouldn’t say it was a small crowd there that night. WE were the crowd. There were a couple of others but the group was small enough that we all conversed with the band. Afterward, Fran cornered Murphy and arranged for a lesson the following day. Fran, like Murphy, loved to see more women in bluegrass. She wrote for Women in Bluegrass. With those and some other articles, she became a professional member of IBMA. She loved going to the conventions, loved getting fellow New Englanders to attend.

Fran not only learned to play bluegrass, she also learned about the music, chords, and structures and things I don’t understand. She marveled at each new understanding. “Last year I wouldn’t have noticed that,” she’d say. She read the history. She read Masters of the Five-String Banjo and then began collecting autographs. She met Earl! A group of North Shore (north of Boston) pickers came to our small house for a monthly jam. Then a member of the group managed to get a hall in nearby Hamilton for the fee of playing a Fourth of July gig in the town bandstand. More recently a smaller group has met at the house again. This time it was in Fran’s dream music room in our newly finished attic. The attic was finished just about the time more cancer was found and the double mastectomy was being planned. There were fewer jams after that, less banjo playing altogether.

At IBMA Murphy asked Fran about the scarves she was wearing on her head. She thought she had beaten the cancer, but now I think it was too late even when Murphy saw her. She died of cancer on July 18, 2001. She was 55.

As I talk to those who knew her and read their comforting notes, I realize what she had accomplished. She introduced some to bluegrass. She encouraged others to take up playing an instrument. Her group of fellow pickers says they wouldn’t have met without her. She valued music, especially all the live bluegrass and folk we have in New

England. She tried in vain to get others to attend a concert or two. She left her smile wherever she’d go.

Bob Larkin

Beverly, Mass.

Gotta Get These CDs!

We don’t often talk about CDs in WIB but I have to mention three recent must-have CDs which focus on women.

Rebel’s Clinch Mountain Sweethearts pairs Ralph Stanley with some big-name female talent: Iris Dement Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Pam Tillis, Maria Muldaur, Gail Davies, Jeannie Seely, and others. The songs are primarily Stanley Brothers numbers such as Will You Miss Me, The Memory Of Your Smile, I’ll Never Grow Tired Of You, and Rank Stranger. Most of the cuts are excellent but my gotta-play-that-one-again favorite is Riding On That Midnight Train with Iris Dement. Loving You Too Well with Dolly Parton is a close second.

The only way to describe Mountain Soul on Epic by Patty Loveless is intense. My god can she belt out a song! The CD is a blend of hard-core bluegrass (Daniel Prayed, I Know You’re Married, Two Coats) and newly written, old-fashioned, hard-edged, country songs. Deanie Richardson plays fiddle throughout, and Carmella Ramsey sings background vocals. The harmonies are to die for.

Songcatcher on Vanguard also features some high-profile women singing pre-bluegrass ballads updated with modern arrangements. Artists include Dolly Parton, Patty Loveless, Iris Dement, Hazel Dickens, Roseanne Cash, and Gillian Welch. There’s plenty of raw emotion here on Barbara Allen, Fair and Tender Ladies, Wind and Rain, and the heartbreaking Mary Of The Wild Moor. All three CDs highly recommended!